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BergerWasTaken
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Name: Berger
Country: United Kingdom
Metro: London
Gender: Male
Interests: WHY, ethics, philosophy, politics, computers, technology and current events. I read, write and think. I enjoy sleeping.
Expertise: Thinking and brief moments of clarity. Finding problems in systems and poking them. Asking awkward questions. Fixing computers. I'll let my blog decide whether or not I'm good at writing.
Occupation: Being me.
Industry: Thinking
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
10/18/2004
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| A Note on My Writing |
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| Usually when I write on this blog I write it quickly and passionately. This means that my ideas flow out quickly and I will occasionally make mistakes. Please forgive me. Sometimes I may even omit the word 'not'. Scary stuff.
Thanks for stopping by, please subscribe. Oh and if you think I'm wrong, please let me know.
Berger |
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| It's always the case. You're talking to someone quite calmly about something and then *WHAM* you get hit with something that is completely irrational or stereotypical and you bring them up on it "what do you mean that all xs are y?" Before you know it you hear some rehearsed diatribe about how they're stupid or wrong or some other ridiculous rationalisation. You nod along too polite to pick holes in it all whilst they foam at the mouth in rage.
This happens with science. There's this whole thing currently about "how science can't give you all the answers" or "science deals with the how and not the why", which until recently I had no genuine sympathy for. However I've finally had an experience which I could see would lead me down such a path if I didn't quash the feeling of rage quickly before exploding into a sloppy use of nouns, adjectives and expletives.
A friend of mine on the philosophy-based course that we are taking has been trained as a scientist. He has an undergrad degree in Biochemistry and an MSc and MPhil in related areas. He knows a lot about science and, in particular, biology. However recently he has been going on a bit of an intellectual bender surrounding the evolution of ethics and theories of optimisation. Now the latter I am having trouble understanding and he has been routinely using it as an explanation in seminars for things that ordinarily have not been the business of biology at all. In fact, it's such a relatively new (and undeveloped) theory that I really fail to grasp it and how it actually applies.
And so in here lies the problem. It's an immature theory - it has little theoretical grounding (as far as I can see), it has no supporting evidence. To me, it just does not even make sense and I've been raising the problems that I have with it with him so that I could better understand it. However, it looks like he has snapped. Finally, over Facebook, he launched into an angry tirade at me. He then very wrongly characterised my views as "non-cognitivist constructivist hand wavy hippy crap", which is simply not fair.
The point here is that if he is going to posit a new theory, a radical one at that, then there needs to be good reason for it. I had previously asked him two questions, both of which he didn't answer, concerning this. The first was "does this theory explain new phenomena that cannot already be explained?" and the second "does this explain current phenomena better than current theories?" I can't see a reason for his theory and I can't see why it makes sense. However it is his interactions with me (he also asked that in future I only offer 'constructive criticisms') that gave me a new sense of empathy for people who have their beliefs challenge by science and scientists. There really is arrogance amongst members of the scientific community. Whilst I do not doubt that there is arrogance every where, including those with non-scientific dogmatic beliefs, scientists earn themselves no favours by engaging with people in such a way. Such interactions are actually active setbacks, which only push the public's understanding of (and 'faith in') science and scientists back, which is bad for science.
As a philosopher I certainly don't believe that I am engaging in 'non-cognitivist constructivist hand wavy hippy crap' when I posit explanations that do not necessary rely on scientific evidence (often there's no need). The field of evolutionary ethics is in no sense mature and offering a radical reconceptualisation of a key component of it (i.e. redefining the 'evolutionary' part) is not some automatic "I win" button. There needs to be a demonstration of why it works before it can be taken seriously. Since there has been none one MUST conclude that it is currently an impotent theory; a theory that does not CURRENTLY have explanatory power.
'Hand wavy hippy crap' ... sheesh, what am I to him? A faith healer? A homoeopath? A priest?
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| Anybody else get some weird footprints on their Xanga? I seem to be getting about 15 visits a day from someone or something (i.e. a bot) from Korea and I also get about 5 visits a day to a very specific post from someone in Germany. It's always the same post as well. Check it out, it has an awful lot of page views, over 520 and rising all the time. Weird, weird, weird.
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| Damn you, girls, with your fun parts and interesting personalities!
*shakes angry fist*
Attraction is a strange thing. I don't really remember the amount of girls that I have asked out, though I know it's not many (single digits, man) and I have strived to change that since arriving at this university. A disappointing moment came when I asked out a girl who I had gotten on really well with whilst out on a hike and she said yes. We had a nice evening and then Christmas break came. We spent some time apart, sent each other a few polite messages and then about a week before term started up again I got message from her on Facebook saying that she had thought about where it was going and decided that she didn't want a relationship with me. Sucks.
The weird thing is that she still wants to hang out with me and, as far as I know, she's still single with no other offers on the table. What I draw from this is that if she still wants to spend time with me (and that seems like a genuine offer) and there's no one else vying for her affections then it must be down to my troll-like appearance, or something. I don't think I look that bad. I've had two girlfriends and only one them needed glasses.
This is interesting as well as a female friend of mine and I were discussing dating and she was telling me what she likes in a guy. Sure, she focused on appearances as part of that description and then she asked me if I thought she was shallow as a result. I immediately answered, 'yes, but so is everyone else' and it's true. Even I am shallow but I guess I just have really low standards or I'm just too pragmatic to hold out for 'the one'. If an interesting girl asked me out I would probably say yes. However I've never been asked out before, by anybody, so I'm yet to test that theory.
We are all shallow and I guess that was what makes the rejection by her to be not so bad. She is a really nice girl who was honest but kind about rejecting me and that's to her credit. Being strung along under an illusion intentionally or simply because she just couldn't face up to rejecting me would have been horrible. She did right by her and by me.
So, I think I've put it behind me now. I'll try again with someone new soon I think. Asking out girls isn't as hard as it was when I was younger: I've come along way personally and rejection is not so bad. There are new targets. New personalities. New fun parts I might get to touch.
Oooh... exciting times. Exciting times, indeed.
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| For part of my course I have to read up on Natural Law theory as part of a wider study of jurisprudence. Needless to say, it annoys the hell out of me. Since becoming the rationally minded person that I am I have grown great contempt for anything that posits theories based on some sort of God, deity or divine nature of humanity. Building on the sentiment in the last paragraph of my previous post, it seems very strange to talk about the origin of morality without taking into consideration the evolution of morality. Saying that there is some divine nature to morality or that there exists moral codes outside of the existence of moral agents (e.g. humans) seems very, very strange. What possible reason could there be for such a view?
In the little reading that I have done the feel I get for it is that there are a number of 'absolutes' that are intrinsically morally good or bad and that require no justification. That's fine, in a sense, if you want to argue that and some more recent academic lawyers have done so. It's why we have things like 'Human Rights' and also, if you're American, there are signs of it in the Declaration of Independence: "we hold these truths to be self-evident..." I have a problem with this notion, though, and it is only a small problem in comparison to the larger one, which I will talk about in a minute, and that is that I still can't see a reason to think that they are absolute.
To take an example, perhaps the most prominent, absolute right of each person is that they are allowed to ensure their own survival. If someone is trying to kill you then you can kill them in defence. If you're about to starve you're allowed to kill another human being and eat them in order to survive (HOWEVER, this must be done fairly (for instance you must draw lots to decide, not 'set upon' someone) and humanely where possible). In fact there are a great number of situations you can think of if given enough time. But one immediate problem with this, I think, is a situation where your death would prevent the loss of life to far more people. Say there was some situation where you if you died one million people would be saved but if you lived one million people would die. All things being equal think your right to save yourself is quite clearly non-existent. You really shouldn't save yourself. The only justification you could give is "it's my life I do what I please with it." However in a civilised society with laws and social norms like ours today very few would be willing to defend you and of those I don't think they could give very good reasons to in the first place. People who do often make the rather unconvincing argument that it is impossible to compare the lives of each person and that the numbers do not count. I take it to be intuitive amongst most people that in such a situation they really ought to give their own life to save the lives of a million people and that were he to go back to his community he would be ostracised.
In any case we can talk about these things. There are arguments to be had back and forth. However at no point does it make sense to talk about God. Why does God have to be added into these situations? Why must we posit that there is some orchestrator that made each man equal with these inalienable rights? So what I have decided to do is to substitute the term 'God' with 'Loch Ness Monster'. Now it should be transparent that it makes absolutely no sense. Both are beings with similar level of probability (i.e. as Dawkins notes about God (paraphrasing), 'so close to zero that it's not even worth considering') in the sense that we can't DISPROVE their existence. Likewise we can't disprove any possible magical properties that they might have.
So, reading works about natural law that were written prior to Darwin's acceptance only goes to infuriate me. A friend of mine said that I should try and look passed it, but it's so difficult. It's especially difficult when I believe that laws and morality are relative to the people and the society in which they are meant operate. Whilst it is great to believe that all peoples are equal if you are in a place where there is no obedience to that rule or an authority to enforce it, it is of little point following it. We can say that it is an absolute NOW only through our own naïvety of the past and geography. In societies which are not modern where such a 'right' is not followed by their peoples it seems foolish to suggest that there actually is and that all of the followers are wrong.
I find natural law very difficult to believe and I think that as this module progresses it will become clear that there is a consensus that it is not widely accepted. If not then we're going to have a very interesting seminar on it on Monday. I plan to be vehement if someone tries defending it because unless they have a good reason to proffer for its efficacy I'm going to find it very difficult to compromise to 'agree to disagree'.
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| Why can't I write songs?
Why can't I be meaningful?
Why don't people come to listen to me?
Why don't girls ask me out?
What is poetry anyway?
What is philosophy?
What is the meaning of life?
What is the meaning of meaning?
How can I be a better person?
How can I get whiter teeth?
How can I get smarter?
How can I be good?
Who am I going to marry?
Who is going to kill me?
Who is going to be my son?
Who will save me?
When will I be free?
When will I be successful?
When will my time come?
When will you leave?
Where is here?
Where is my mind?
Where did it all begin?
Where the fuck is the blog going? Seriously. I mean, where? It seemed like a good idea and then... wow. Look at this crap. I mean look at you, all serious, all filled with whimsy. No doubt thinking 'wow, man, that Berger is mighty whimsical'.
Okay, you're probably not.
And I should probably stop insulting my readers.
You're lovely (and I'm more modest than this). Honest.
Out of those questions, only a few of those can really be answered. Out of those only a few can be answered in our lifetime. My entire academic life has been all about questions. Not facts but questions. Not answers but questions. Not 'know-how' but 'know-huh?'. In every other discipline I don't think there is as much pluralism / competing theories than in philosophy and its many branches.
... Well, perhaps in some of the pseudo-sciences (like psychology [HA!]).
Bounded up in it is the study of rhetoric, which actually isn't explicit (though I have taken a module on persuasion) but is learned over the years. This is a sense of that 'liberalism' where "everyone's opinion is equally valid" - which I take to be wholly false. Wrong opinions are not equally valid as ones which are very close to being right (i.e. highly plausible). The only real way to prove someone false is to undermine their premises or say that their conclusion is non sequitur (i.e. does not follow). Quite often that means pointing out a logical inconsistency or an empirical misconception.
Then you learn more fallacies. You learn the mistakes that people commonly make. You learn about things like Occam's Razor, the problem of is-and-ought etc. Arguments and discussions become more and more abrupt. "You're wrong" is translated to "I disagree" and often all sentences seem to start like that. Especially when there are religious folk involved or those who have read way too much Kant and Hegel and not enough Wittgenstein and Dawkins.
I'm starting to think that any philosophy book written before the Origin of Species can really only have novelty value. Talking about ethics in a way that doesn't take into account the evolution of reciprocal altruism seems doomed to be misguided. Why does it make sense to talk of obligation when really that's not what we mean? What's the point talking about helping people in far away countries as if they were in your own country when that fundamentally seems to run against our selfish genes? Haiti is a tragedy but there is something 'right' (I use that gingerly) about wanting to help those in your locality, region or country more than those outside of them.
So what's the moral of this story?
Don't ask stupid questions.
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