Philosophy 101E

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.

So when Daniel was talking about Deep Blue, he said that it was programmed just to play chess and that people who were smarter then it created it. My first thought was the idea of God. Did God not just program us? He is, after all, our creator. If our thoughts are “electrical” synapses, how can we be that different from a machine? Maybe one day they will be able to create “caring” machines. People only 30 yrs ago could not imagine the technology we have so far. Like Frank said in class, one day they will be doing things we can’t imagine about at all. But just because we can’t imagine it, mainly because of our lack in understanding the science and math behind new ideas, doesn’t mean there isn’t some inventor out there thinking about how to figure out a way to incorporate feelings into machines. From what we learned about earlier, there is no such thing as an imagination, just learning knowledge that has always been there. When you think about it that way, aren’t these scientists just trying to create a human from metal? I think that one day, it could be a possibility. Especially with all of the scientific advances on watching how a brain reacts to electrical impulses, what it looks like when it is thinking of different things, and what happens when certain parts are missing. That is where psychology, philosophy, and physiology come together. I think when Daniel was talking in class, he said that you can’t open a brain and see a verbal ‘box’. But when scientists take a look at the electrical impulses while someone talks or listens, they see patterns and certain areas that consistently light up. They have studied the physical means of the brain and have figured out where different things are processed, sent to where, interpreted to what, and sent to somewhere else. They have learned a lot and they can only learn more. If it is out there, it should be able to be recognized one day.

Just like in the movie Pi, everything is a pattern. I know they didn’t talk about the findings of symbol/number Pi, but that was some pattern that was not obvious until it was studied to a point that it was right in front of their faces. Once that number was recognized, then it was obvious that it could be used for a lot of concepts pertaining to a circle. I was thinking about the time in the movie with the guy was talking about how the board game had infinite choices (like the example of chess in class). Yes, in the beginning, there are infinite choices. But the further they got into the game the more logistic the choices became. It is a lot like guessing how to do something and not succeeding. You try different ways until you stumble upon a right one. This reminds me of Einstein trying to figure out the light bulb. Then, once you can figure out one part, your next level is narrowed down on what you need to figure out the second time. Until you can spend so much time, like lifetimes or millennia, until all the works piles up onto the one correct answer. This is like in movie Waking Life. When the guy was talking about it took a shorter and shorter time for “God” to make things. The eras get shorter and shorter as they approach human existence, which to us has been a long time, but really hasn’t been that long at all compare to how old the Universe is. But who knows, maybe that has a pattern in its self that will one day be a predictable end.

In John Haugeland’s article, there was a lot that confused me. However, the last thing he says, and something that we discussed in class today, is whether or not computers could ever feel, or care. I personally have never thought of a computer as anything more than a machine, and I don’t think that I ever will. However, Haugeland says that “if cognitive science is on the right track, then some semantic engines can care about things, be involved with them, have personalities, and so on.” (page 49) I do not understand how this can be, since everything that is part of the machine starts from a human. If the computer is programmed to feel embarrassed, ambitious and so on, it is only feeling that way because a human first experienced those emotions and found a way to instill them in a computer. While I do not understand computers very well, I can not see how this would happen.

Furthermore, why would anyway want a human to begin caring? Obviously, there’s been a lot of movies and other media that jokes about computers taking over the world. While this is ridiculous, it does raise the point of how we are making computers so similar to us. In some ways, it seems that they are becoming better than us at things that were once solely human. For example, today in class we talked about the computer that beat the expert at chess. I find something like that unsettling, and I do not think that is something we should be striving for. I think machines can be useful, but when we start drawing too many similarities between us and them, it is time to stop.

Thankfully, Haugeland did mention right at the end of his article that while computers may be able to be programmed to care, they will never be able to have the common sense and values of people. They will not be able to put things into any sort of context, or use reason that way that humans do.

The idea that humans are like machines is plausible to many, but not entirely accurate to me. The majority of situations that we as humans face can be broken down into their indivisible parts when you are faced with a single question of “yes or no,” or “one or zero.” Even the functions of the human body can be broken down into if then statements. If it something swallowed is not edible, you will throw it up; else it is edible and it will continue on to try to be digested. If said edible food is made up of beta-d-glucose (fiber such as in carrots) it will merely pass through the system and go to the end; else it contains alpha-d-glucose (digestible) and its contents will be absorbed and further processes will act upon it until it is broken down and reaches the end. This idea of breaking all situations down into ones and zeros works most of the time.

Questions are not always that simple, however, and they do not always have obvious one way or the other answers. What happens when someone raises a question such as ‘what is love?’ Or if you asked a question concerning a relationship such as what is the right way to let a girl know it was not meant to be. No one can write a machine code for a relationship because every single relationship is different. The reason someone was able to write a successful computer code for a game of chess is because chess has strict rules. There are no rules to relationships or life however and you cannot write a code for life because there are infinitely many situations that we face. What allows us to answer these complex questions and what separates us from animals and machines is our ability to reason. Without reason we would be just stuck in a giant chess game of life where every question had a yes or no answer. It is this ability to reason that gives us our freedom.

“The basic idea of cognitive science is that intelligent beings are semantic engines – in other words, automatic formal systems with interpretations under which they consistently make sense.” The thought that people are semantic engines is kind of deep, and some people will agree with it and others will disagree with it. According to the reading, any semantic engine can be imitated by a computer if the right program is used to achieve the imitation. In order to achieve this, artificial intelligence is needed to imitate people and that allows for any type of imitation imaginable because ethics won’t get in the way of a project with artificial intelligence.

Although I am not completely clear with the idea that intelligent beings are automatic formal systems, I believe I disagree with what I understand about it. According to this thought, we need to alter tokens that follow the rules of a formal system. I don’t understand how humans can be related to a formal system. Someone can probably come up with aspects to describe as a person’s token and a starting position, but I don’t see any explanation in transition rules for a person’s life. There are no rules in life, and a person can choose to do or not do whatever they please. Although their decisions may not be looked upon as ethical, just, or morally right, all people have the option to do as they please.

In order to imitate a person, artificial intelligence is needed. I believe that artificial intelligence will only imitate people to a certain point. This is due to two reasons: humans will eventually reach a point in technology when it can go no further due to limited resources, and original intentionality will come into effect. Although people have endless ideas in their minds, there is no way all those ideas, especially with technology, can be produced due to limited resources in the world. Certain things are not cost effective and will never end up being produced. Also, original intentionality states that a computer does what it does because it was designed that way; the doings of that computer, or artificial intelligence in this case, was derived from the designer’s intentionality and not by the artificial intelligence itself. This means that the artificial intelligence would not be imitating a person under its own power; it would only take action and imitate a person due to the fact that it was programmed by a designer to do that.

I thought that this article and the discussions in class have been extremely interesting. I agree with the whole idea that humans are like machines. When we were talking about the computer that is programmed to play chess, it made me think of how similar that is to humans. We all may act differently in situations, but we all have the same main choices to choose from. We, like the computer, are programmed so that before each move we make, we look through all of our options and choose which one has the best chance of getting whatever we’re looking for. Like the professional chess player who was shocked when the computer played a “human” move during the game, we as humans are shocked when other people make decisions that we can’t imagine doing, such as brutal cases of murder or rape. We perceive these actions as “non-human” and can’t believe that the person was capable of doing this. However, we, like the chess player, just choose not to see that one branch in our array of options, but we all have it in us. Although we all vary in our different behaviors and actions, the general ideas and paths are there for most situations in each human being. We have been programmed, like the computer, to choose the options with the best chance for success, but every once in awhile there is a error or a slip-up and we choose the path that seems impossible or incomprehendable. If we really searched deep and thought about all the options we could take in a certain situation, we would see that those same “non-human” paths lie in ourselves as well, though the majority of people chose to block them and don’t even consider them in their everyday activities and normal situations. This discussion showed a part of us as human beings that we may not want to look at or realize, but the truth is that is there and we are all capable of making one of those “non-human” choices and shocking everyone.

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?

Personally, I do not buy the analogy from class that human beings are a formal system. I mean, it is understandable that we might have a system very similar to that, but we are not strictly formal systems. I like the argument that was presented that we are simply something more than that. I believe that this argument might be a little cliché of course, but it is correct nonetheless.

The formal system that was being used initially to describe human existence does make some sense. The idea of operating by a set of rules and the starting points all make sense. I think you could even say that the operations of the human body do live to a set of rules. The human must breathe, must recycle wastes and all the other necessary bodily functions and that could be looked as following a set of rules. If the body breaks these rules there could be dire consequences. The problem is though; can human existence simply be based on physical presence? To further elaborate, there is no physical proof of God’s existence by Descartes definition, but there is a sort of existence in his own mind. Therefore, if God’s existence is not based on a physical foundation, does a human’s existence have to be based on a physical foundation?

This is where I believe the formal system fails to completely define human existence. It can be related to the physical aspect of humans, but not the mind or “soul” as some people would refer to. To say that computers are a formal system, and that humans are the same, thus computers can emulate humans does not make sense. As also stated in class, the idea that computers must receive human input first in order to even do anything backs the previous statement.

Like I said earlier, the formal system I believe can be used to define the basic physical part of human existence, and sure a computer can emulate that, like they make the terminators in the movie. The emotional or mental part of the human being, I do not believe can be associated with the formal system. The mind does not necessarily operate no a set of rules. The mind is an open system and is not restricted to any set of norms.

The other day I was watching the show Numb3rs and it made me think of a Laplacean demon. We talked in class about how a Laplacean demon knows everything about the universe. It can already predict everything that is going to happen. I can see how we can use calculations to predict the future. There are just calculations that are too intricate and beyond human knowledge. The reason I bring up the show Numb3rs is because in the show this mathematician uses algorithms that he formulates to predict such things as the place where a murder would be hiding. He would just take a case, collect a lot of different information about the last few places they knew the murder had stayed, what interests he had, the directions he had been heading, if he had any family, etc. With this information he could predict where the murder was going. Not only that, but this mathematician can predict randomness of a shooter in a random shooting. He said that humans cannot truly be random, so by gathering enough variables he could predict a certain person’s “randomness”.

Although Numb3rs is just a show, many of the episodes are based on true accounts. This makes me believe that it is very possible to predict a human’s actions. To jump ahead and say we can predict a whole life would in my mind mean knowing every variable from the very second a newborn was born(probably even before that), the temperature of the room and if it was raining in Spain at that time or not. It is kind of like the butterfly effect. Everything in the universe will effect a person’s life therefore if we wanted to predict a person’s life we would have to know everything about the universe. This is exactly what the Laplacean demon is.

In this theory we take a physical stance on the universe. It follows Dennett’s philosophy that everything in the world is physical. If everything in the world is physical then that means that our consciousness is somehow made up by the physical parts of our body, or at least I believe that’s what Dennett is saying. Correct me if I’m wrong. It is kind of like how Kierkegaard had the theory of God being in our lives out of faith, and that he was in our lives because we needed him to be there so that we could become a true self (from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). In the same way Dennett thinks that we have consciousness in our lives for a reason. I couldn’t really find a lot of information on Dennett that I could understand and use here. He spends a lot of time trying to explain what consciousness is. Anyways, it is hard to say that consciousness is real following this argument, but also, it is hard to say that the physical world is real following the argument that started with Descartes. I am finished trying to be convinced of anything in philosophy. I’m at the point where I just understand philosophies now.

Thanks to the people who came to the screening, I know it was a lot to take in. You can go back over the transcript of the movie here:

Waking Life full script.

I encourage anyone who couldn’t make the screening to rent the movie. I’ll see if I can put a copy on reserve at the library.

The movie has lots of problems, and you should definitely take everything in the movie with a grain of salt (especially the studies and statistics cited), but I think it wraps up the Descartes dreaming stuff pretty well, and gives us all something to think about. I can talk more about specific issues raised in the film in this thread, if there is anything anyone would like to discuss further.

Decartes is known as one of the great thinkers of his time. But Decartes’ time is long over, and we live in a digital age. His way of thinking progressed Philosophy, and that’s great, but his argument is full of holes. This text belongs in a library and should not be taken seriously. His thinking is all over the place and he tends to contradict himself. In one mediation he talks about how he wants to disconnect himself and his thoughts from all preconceptions, yet he talks about how God is all good and perfect. This perception of God is a preconception that he got from the church. How does he know that God is not an evil genius?

Descartes uses many false pretenses. He makes many assumptions which lead to bad arguments. His whole notion of “clear and distinct” is a really blurry line, yet it is one of the central arguments. He has no idea about what is clear and distinct. Back then it was clear that the earth revolves around the sun and the world was flat. Descartes does not have the advantage of science, and his attempts to create a framework for science are very shady.

He believes that humans are incapable of creating a notion of God, and that God must exist because he’s the only one that is able to create a notion of himself. This is clearly circular reasoning, and I believe that he underestimates the power of imagination.

The only good argument that I got out of Decartes is “I think therefore I am.” When those words were said, it was a mildstone in the history of man. For the first time, humans began to think in a more progressive way. Descartes was one of the first great thinkers, that does not mean he was exactly right though.

So, I just attended the lecture. It was actually very interesting. Basically, Doug Hofstadter’s hypothesis is that all cognitive thought is based on analogies, whether they are conscious or not. An analogy, as Hofstadter defined it, is a comparison or recognition of the commonalities of two events. This goes far beyond the simple, “A cake is to a baker as a hat is to a haberdasher.” (and yes, I did throw that in there merely for the sake of getting to type haberdasher.)

Hofstadter gave many examples of how the mind draws such analogies. One that I thought illustrated his point rather well, was about his experiences on a plane and at the airport. While he was on the plane heading over the Atlantic Ocean, it had to be diverted to avoid a hurricane. Then, when he was in the airport, he had to change his path to avoid walking into a woman. Without going into deep thought, his mind drew the parallel that what he had just done was the same as what the plane had to do, to a certain extent.

Another interesting argument was the fact that people often call people by the wrong name. The conclusion is that since you clearly know the difference between your sister and your friend’s sister, then you must be making the analogy that they are both sisters, and therefore might inadvertently call your friend’s sister the name of your own. This would also mean that the mind is drawing analogies that you are not even aware of until the moment you misname someone. Then, you realize your mistake and will forget about it.

This hypothesis can also be applied to some of the topics we are discussing. One implication would be that no thoughts could be clear and distinct, because they are all analogous to several other thoughts with similar basis. Furthermore, this would mean that all new thoughts are really just building on old thoughts. Certainly this would agree with Descartes’ ideas about creativity and imagination. However, there is no clear determination of what the first thought that becomes the building block for all other thoughts is. For example, you can draw the analogy that a boat is a car on water. However, can you know whether you knew about a car before you knew about a bike or other vehicle?

Another thought that crossed my mind (pun unintended) is why our mind finds the need to use these analogies. It could either be to simplify a subject and make it easier to remember. Or it could just be out of laziness. It is always much easier to answer a question like, “What is that movie about?” with, “Have you ever read Fahrenheit 451?” It just makes explaining topics much easier. Instead of going into great plot detail and character information, the question can be diverted into an analogy with another movie. The same thing happens in every artistic form. However, when we turn this question from the point of the observer, to the point of the creator, it has some serious questions.

What if every artist created something as a reaction or homage to another artist? We draw these comparisons as observers all the time. How can we tell if The Matrix is not just a combination of several other books and movies already created? That would be a serious argument for people who like to say the creativity is dead or always has been dead. It is scary to think about, but at the same time, is somewhat understandable. If it is human nature to continuously draw analogies, then wouldn’t we want to be dealing with something we can do that with? Something completely new, which for all intents and purposes cannot feasibly be thought of, would scare people because they wouldn’t know how to react. The previous encounter with something similar wouldn’t be there.

This is exactly like someone brought up in class today. We see aliens as having human characteristics because that is exactly what we understand. If an alien didn’t look like a human, then chances are it would look like something else that we already know of.

So what does this mean for new ideas?

Any new ideas? (haha, ok, I got a laugh out of it)

One of the most interesting things to me is the debate between empiricism and rationalism. Empiricism is the idea, or theory, that a person gains knowledge about the world through their senses. As John Locke said, they begin with a blank slate and as they live, each new experience gives the person more knowledge. On the other hand, rationalism holds that humans are born with the ability to reason, and thus are able to gain knowledge through reason.

I personally find Descartes, and the other rationalists to have a more convincing argument. Newborn babies are born with the capacity to reason and appear to have some pre-existing knowledge, even if it appears to be the most trivial pieces of knowledge. Descartes’ examples of knowledge regarding mathematical principles and theories make this argument especially convincing for me. In general, people have a basic understanding of mathematics without some prior experience. For example, when I was very young, my mother said that without any prior experience or knowledge, I was able to understand addition. I think that most children are able to understand a basic principle such as addition without have ever experienced it before, meaning that it seems all children are born with the reason to understand a mathematic principle.

What I do not understand however, it how the different philosophers were able to actually distinguish themselves. For example, John Locke tends to be compared to David Hume. David Hume was an empiricist, so I am assuming that John Locke was for the most part an empiricist as well. (Correct me if I am wrong). Yet Locke’s theories on free will seem to correlate with the rationalist Descartes’ theory of mind-body dualism. Descartes seems to think that the mind and body are separate, just as Locke seems to believe when speaking of free will. Locke states that a person’s body may be free, but the mind will never be free, meaning that they are separate in most respects. It seems like Descartes would agree with Locke’s idea of free will, especially due to his beliefs and ideas about God. Perhaps I am simply making too many assumptions, but it seems like many philosophers from different schools of thought seem to cross over to the other schools of thoughts.

When I was pondering Descartes and his ideas, I decided to think back upon Meditation Two and his reasoning as to how he knows he exists. He rationalizes that because he is thinking, he exists. Then that brought a question to my mind: what about brain dead people? Descartes pretty much answered my question in Meditation Two. He said “for as long as I am thinking; for perhaps it could also come to pass that if I were to cease all thinking I would then utterly cease to exist.” The thought that someone who is brain dead does not exist, according to Descartes, seems to make sense. Wikipedia defines brain death as “a complete and irreversible cessation of brain activity.” Since there is no brain activity whatsoever, the person is more or less a vegetable. Although their body is still in existence, their thoughts are no more and they cease to exist. Descartes’ argument seems to make sense in this case.

Since Descartes seemed to have answered that question, I began pondering about people that are in a coma. Wikipedia states that when in a coma, you are in “a profound state of unconsciousness.” A coma is similar to being brain dead except that there is a chance of it being reversible and the body can sometimes exhibit respiration without assistance of a respirator. If you take into account that respiration is just a natural bodily function and has nothing to do with a person’s thoughts and that the person is unconscious, then a person in a coma is nonexistent while they are in that coma. Now if that person were to come out of the coma, they would exist once again. There seems to be a fallacy in logic in that a person in and out of a coma is going from existent to non-existent and then back to being existent just as they were before. That basically means that someone can either rise from the dead or they are reborn under the Cartesian view on existence. That seems a little too far fetched to make sense, but then again, lots of Descartes’ thoughts seem far fetched, so I guess it seems to parallel his ideology.

If God is a perfect God, does it mean that whatever he creates or come up with should be perfect?

Descartes still wants to know the source of his errors so he first considers whether God can be the cause of his error.But first, let me define error, error can be defined as: the condition of having incorrect or false knowledge. Descartes has come to realize that God wouldn’t deceive him because God is perfect and deceiving him will show that God is weak. so let me ask, so who actually make us commit error? God is a perfect God and as Descartes said, he wouldn’t create something imperfect. In the story of creation in the bible, God said he created us in his own image meaning in his looks like head, hands, face and so on. But i don’t think he created us to be as perfect as him by not making errors. And i am not sure were this quote comes from but they say “to err is humans”.

Descartes came to the point that God is a supreme being and we human beings are in between the supreme being and nothing and the reason why we are not perfect is because God wills it and God will is always the best. but Descartes says we human biengs also have what he calls the free will ( the doctrine that the conduct of human beings expresses personal choice and is not simply determined by physical or divine forces). Descartes think his will is as perfect as God’s and he thinks God is only greater in powers,knowledge and the objects he can affect. i agree with human beings being able to make their own choice but sometimes you do not always have your choice eventhough it might be perfect.

Descartes came to a conclusion that God doesn’t make us error but errors result when we extend our will beyond our knowledge.there is this one thing that Decartes stated that i totally agree with him is that perfection is found in God’s creation as a whole and not individually beause you will definitely find errors when considering individually. it is like finding a fault with just the mouse of a computer but the whole idea and creation of the computer is perfect.

This kind of topic can be controversial; is like asking why human beings exist? eventhough some people like Descartes and other philosophers have try to find why humans make errors, there haven’t been any certain reasons for it.

so class do you somehow agree with Descartes about his findings or you have a different idea?

In class, I was under the impression Hume would explain for us how the separate entities of mind and body were connected; I thought Hume was to explain the “God card,” Descartes pulled. When I asked how Hume would do this, I was confused with the response I received. Therefore, I went home and thought about it for a while. In another class, I just recently read the work, Nature, written by Ralph Waldo Emerson. According to Emerson, there are two ways of looking at nature, the first is a material way that is tangible to corporeal beings, and the other is in a religious way. Emerson branched off Descartes’ foundation of “Cogito ergo sum,” and wrote this piece about nature’s relation to the mind. Emerson believed in idealism: that if an individual saw nature and the mind as one thing, then that individual would become part of nature and therefore become God. I agree with Emerson to an extent. Just as in the Bowerbird clips, the beings of nature appear to have thought; for example different female animals were attracted to different nests the male animals made. Their bodies were all the same, however a different entity allowed the birds to distinguish and choose one nest from another. If we can prove that nature and the mind are of one sphere, that idealism exists among all living creatures on the earth, then perhaps this connection with nature (and therefore a direct connection with God) is the link between the mind and the body Descartes needed. Alternatively, we could wonder if the mind and nature are connected, does a corporeal world even exist. Is it possible that the realm of the mind exists in the individual and in God, Who surrounds us in our environment? So I guess I am proposing Barkley’s argument with a bit of a twist. We have nothing beyond our experiences, which our minds create; however, what if our minds were in an interacting network of minds of nature and individual souls such as ourselves? What if this interaction between nature and mind, which makes us God, is what creates the senses our mind experiences: what if when we smell a flower or see the blue sky our mind is interacting with God, and there is no physical realm at all.

So I will attempt the topic of free will although today’s class was just a lot of information that is still trying to sink in.

I like to go to Wikipedia when reading philosophy so that I get more information about philosophers and common debates, so I looked up free will and a page full of different philosophers came up. I found a philosopher named Schopenhauer and he says:

Everyone believes himself a priori to be perfectly free, even in his individual actions, and thinks that at every moment he can commence another manner of life… . But a posteriori, through experience, he finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but subjected to necessity, that in spite of all his resolutions and reflections he does not change his conduct, and that from the beginning of his life to the end of it, he must carry out the very character which he himself condemns.
I like this. First of all, I believe that free will are not really the decisions we make but more or less why we make those decisions. It’s almost like free will is part of our personality or our free will makes up our personality. This reminds me of how I tried not to like my favorite color blue. I just open up my closet and see a lot of blue, and I have blue everything in my room. I knew I had too much blue and thought I should vary it a bit, but I couldn’t. I told my friends, “I just can’t help it. Blue is always the prettiest one.” So, in making a decision when picking between a blue pencil or a red pencil I could easily say that I want the red one, but I cannot really convince myself that I didn’t want to pick the blue one, because well, blue is always the prettiest to me.

Going back to Schopenhaur, his quote says that at first, I had the free will to like blue. Maybe when I was an infant I always loved looking at the sky because it was so open and amazing so therefore I made the connection that I liked the sky so I liked blue, I don’t know, but I had a choice and I picked blue. It’s not even picking blue. It’s an unconcious picking of blue. Then after that my will was not free. I continued to like blue and could not convince myself otherwise. This is an example of what we learned in class about Locke’s philosophy. I think it is a very good argument.

Continuing, and taking from class, the phrase “you are free to act upon your will” seems to go along with this also. Your will is just like a true opinion to yourself. For example, “blue is pretty” is an opinion to others, but to you it is the truth. Your will is always there and you cannot help but feel or believe or see certain things, but the actions that result from these feelings are up to you. I could decide to never buy another blue object ever again, but that doesn’t change that I still think blue is the prettiest color.

So, all in all, I like the argument that you start with free will a priori, and after the experience your freedom has been taken from your will and you cannot stop thinking one way or another. The will is one thing, and the action is another. The will is there, and the freedom is there, but not together. It seems that the action is where the freedom comes in. I can pick the blue pencil or the red pencil.

I’m having a hard time grasping this concept that the mind is not part of the body. How can the mind and the body not be the same working unit? Descartes seems to believe that the mind is separate from the body. If the mind were separate from the body, then causing some harm to the body, would not affect the mind at all.

The mind, as it seems to me, consists of two parts. The first part of the mind would be the part that controlls your bodily motions, such as picking up a book or writing on a piece of paper. These things are controlled by your mind. You have to think about picking up an object before you really pick it up. Thinking is a process of the mind. Once you think about doing something, your brain tells your body to whatever it is you want it too. This case falls into the eliminative materialism point of view, where the mind and the body are working together.

The second part of the mind is when you think and try to infer about things. Any thinking process falls into this category. Whether you think about math, about athletics, or about anything else, the mind is working. This case goes with Descartes’ idea of interactionism, where the mind is working separately from the body.

Both of these instances involve the mind. The first instance involves the body as well. This means that the mind is part of the body, unlike what Descartes claims and is trying to prove in his meditations.

I might be completely wrong about this mind and body idea, but that is how it seems to me. I am a math and science kind of guy so it is hard for me to think that the mind is not part of the body. Here is how I look at this situation: Since you use your mind to tell your body what to do, then it is part of your body. It is the control center of the body. This is the eliminative materialism point of view. Please let me know if you have any other thoughts or comments on this subject.

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.