Moral Responsibility

Normally, the topic of moral responsibility comes at the end of a some long read in a philosophy book. It is the conclusion that finally ends the meat of the ideas that were discussed before it. "Ok, this is what we have, so what does it mean for ethics?" Here, the ethical conversation moves to the foreground in the following way: moral responsibility is impossible.

Before you disregard this idea as being overwhelmingly radical and therefore easily dismissable, let me remind you that this is not an original argument. And as a source, I refer to The Basic Argument, as it is explained in The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility by Galen Strawson. Furthermore, there is nothing to show that acting in accordance with morality is an intrinsic part of our being, as I will show with a description of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan.

First, the Basic Argument:
1. Nothing can be causa sui--nothing can be the cause of itself.
2. In order to be morally responsible, one would have to be the cause of itself.
3. Therefore, nothing can be morally responsible.

Now, the argument is certainly valid; however, it needs clarification, especially in regards to the second premise, which holds the most weight, and is the most debatable. But let's begin chronologically.

Premise 1: Nothing can be the cause of itself.
Certainly, that which is pure matter can not create itself from nothing. The rocks which sit under the foundation of my building did not come to be when its metaphysical essence decided it wanted corporeal existence. This is indubitable. But what about those of us that are more than pure matter? Of course, this is getting into a much larger debate (what does it mean to be a human being? Am I mind and matter, or is mind just the functioning of my body? Am I made up of both physical and metaphysical elements? Only physical? Only mental?), but we will assume, for the purpose of this discussion that when speaking ontologically about our nature, that it is dualistic. That is, there is body and there is mind--they are somehow connected, but as to how, we are unaware.

Now, taking this assumption that one aspect of our make-up is metaphysical, is it safe to say that even that is not the cause of itself? In most reasonable respects, the metaphysical aspects of a human being are dependent on the physical. With exception for theories about ghosts and other supernatural spirits, the soul cannot exist without the body. The mind cannot exist without the matter. And as the physical cannot be the cause of itself, so too the metaphysical cannot be the cause of itself.

(One point of departure here lies with Jean-Paul Sartre. Any significant objection to the first premise and the conclusion that is brought with the second, must originate with a Sartrean idea about the ability to authenticate oneself. Again, for the purposes of this discussion, we will disregard his arguments).

Premise 2: In order to be morally responsible, one must be the cause of itself.
Is this really true? Do I have to originate myself in order to be guilty of a crime? Imagine that I murdered Mr. Carlos and in the witness stand I justified my actions by saying, "But your honor, my mother brought me into the world. If she had not done so I would never have fed Mr. Carlos through a wood-chipper. So clearly, you ought to hold her responsible."

Of course, this seems absurd. For, my mother could of course cite her mother as responsible and so on and so forth. Unless we want to finally conclude that God is responsible for all evil in the world (wait that sounds pretty attractive, actually), then we must draw out this premise's other purpose, which shows that the result is the necessity of actualizing a different kind of infinite regress, which is impossible.

In certain mental aspects I must be the cause of myself. Strawson elucidates:

"But to be truly responsible for how one is, mentally speaking, [...] one must have consciously and explicitly chosen to be the way one is, mentally speaking, in certain respects, and one must have succeeded in bringing it about that one is that way. But one cannot really be said to choose, in a conscious, reasoned, fashion, to be the way one is mentally speaking, in any respect at all, unless one already exists, mentally speaking, already equipped with some principles of choice."

The third premise follows from the first two and, as has been shown, the first two are sound.

Even if this argument, in its incredible simplicity, were corrupt, I maintain that moral responsibility is impossible. Impossible may not be the right word. "Fake" is better. Despite being one of the most debated topics in history (and in the history of philosophy), there are certain aspects of morality that almost everyone adheres to. The golden rule, for example: do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. Respect your elders. Women and children are the first to board the life boats (unless you're a feminist. Then you're happy to sink to the bottom of the Atlantic if it means you weren't treated special because of your sex). But what are all of these? And who are you to say that I should obey them? Shouldn't you be something greater than me in order to command that I follow your rules? And I speak ontologically--your being ought to be greater than mine in order to expect me to follow the social rules that you suggest. But you are not greater, or even different. You are made of the same material that I am made of and have no say over what I choose to do.

Thomas Hobbes outlined the arrival of moral responsibility in Leviathan. Though, his purpose is to show how it saved us from a deranged existence of theft, murder, and aimlessness. But the point I wish to make is that, in his account, morality is fake. It is a social construct, and I mean that in a pejorative term, as in, anything that is a social construct is disingenuous, inauthentic, and for all extensive purposes, meaningless.

The State of Nature
At the beginning of human existence people took what they want, lived where they wanted, ate what they desired to eat, and fornicated with whom they desired to fornicate. It was every man for himself. What determined your right to any object in the world was your ability to acquire it and defend it. So men came together to form a society which protected the group's rights over those of the individual. But in order to do this each man was required to give uphis Right of Nature.

In this way, moral responsibility is insurance. It is socially constructed insurance for the rich and weak to protect themselves from the poor and strong. It is a an attempt to guarantee a predictable life. But get over your desire for a predictable life, and is living according to moral responsibility worth sacrificing your natural rights? I think not.

Jean-Paul Sartre: The Libertarian Perspective

Jean-Paul Sartre: The Libertarian Perspective

The question of free will, as it is understood as a metaphysical problem, typically involves an investigation into causal necessity. Such an inquiry splits philosophers many ways and the number of interpretations of human agency numbers the stars. Jean-Paul Sartre, though, is not so concerned with causation. As it is a part of the metaphysical discussion, it of course plays a role in some sense. Ilham Dilman characterizes Sartre’s philosophy by saying, “The world affects man only through his consciousness of it and this consciousness is not a causal link in a chain of causes” (192). Rather, Sartre primarily uses a phenomenological investigation into consciousness to come to a conclusion about free will and whether or not it is something which human beings possess. In short, he avoids the problem of causality by investigating the nature of human consciousness. His phenomenological ontology allows him to conclude that we are radically free on the basis of the transcendence of consciousness, the existence of nothingness as it arises in thinking, and our existence as one that has no nature. It is this depiction that allows us to call Sartre a libertarian.

Sartre and Phenomenology

The primary text for Sartre’s investigation into the nature of consciousness is Being and Nothingness. Even the title of the book represents the paradox that Sartre elucidates within its pages. That is, there is being, and coupled with it is nothingness. Before we can reach this conclusion we must first discover the foundation of Sartre’s philosophy.

The beginning is not unfamiliar. Just as Aristotle said that our rationality is that which sets us apart from all other beings on Earth, Sartre agrees—though he takes it a step further. He splits all being into two categories, Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself; the first being pure matter, the second, human consciousness. Human beings, then, are the only things which exist as both Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself.

As we will see when the paradox becomes clearer, Being-in-itself stands in radical opposition to nothingness. It is pure matter, or “full positivity”, as Sartre describes it (Being 56). Perhaps the best way to understand Being-in-itself, is by its opposite.

Being-for-itself, first and foremost, depends on Being-in-itself. There must be pure, simple, positive being in order for Being-for-itself to exist. In short, Being-for-itself, on the other hand, is consciousness. However, this simple characterization needs qualification; for animals have consciousness, though they are not what Sartre would call a Being-for-itself. “Consciousness is a being such that in its being, its being is in question in so far as this being implies a being other than itself” (Being 24). The distinction illustrates a phenomenological point about intentionality. It is a peculiar aspect of our consciousness that it is about something other than itself (Transcendence 44). Hence, human beings are unique in that we are the only beings which can be conscious of our consciousness. This kind of self-consciousness, however, is not normal consciousness; it is fleetingly transcendent. “Insofar as my reflecting consciousness is consciousness of itself, it is non-positional consciousness” (Transcendence 44-45). Sartre explains, “To say that consciousness is consciousness of something is to say that it must produce itself as a revealed-revelation of a being which is not it and which gives itself as already existing when consciousness reveals it” (Being 24). For example, when I perceive an apple, not only am I conscious of its placement in space and time, I am also transcendentally aware of my consciousness of the apple. This awareness, however, is fleeting—it cannot be grasped by the “I” in the same way that the apple can (Transcendence 45). This un-graspable aspect of our being constitutes a “nothingness” which Sartre will use to affirm that we are free.

Having established the peculiar construction of consciousness and our formulation through it into Being-for-itself, we have set up the first foundation crucial to understanding Sartre’s ideas about freedom. For, it is through consciousness, through our existence as not merely Being-in-itself, but also Being-For-itself, that nothingness arises. This is where Sartre is able to say that man is a nothing.

Nothingness and Freedom

First, it is important to understand that nothingness cannot exist in merely Being-in-itself. For, as it is shown, Being-in-itself is full positivity (Being 56; Dilman 191 ). In our consciousness, though, nothingness arises. This idea is first characterized by Sartre in his investigation into Being-For-itself. He writes, “Man is the only being by whom a destruction can be accomplished” (Being 39). His example is that of a terrible storm which makes landfall destroying homes, flooding streets, and causing landslides. All of this happens and we say that the storm has destroyed the homes we have built, ruined the streets and made them unusable, and eroded mountains. However, the point that Sartre wants to make is that being has only been rearranged. The matter that makes up the building which now lies in a heap of rubble on the ground still exists, but not in the form that we recognize as a building. To put it in a statement that reveals the free nature of our existence, we posit the world as we like. We make it what it is through our consciousness (Being 39). This point will come up again as we continue.

Another famous example Sartre uses to articulate the arousal of nothingness by consciousness is Pierre in the Café. When he walks into the café, expecting to find his comrade who is not present, nothingness arises that is created by both the non-being of Pierre and also the expectation of Sartre’s consciousness (Being 63). The task, then, is to show that nothingness, as it exists only through the Being-for-itself which is human consciousness, constitutes freedom. Sartre writes, “What we have been trying to define is the being of man in so far as he conditions the appearance of nothingness, and this being has appeared to us as freedom” (Being 60). Freedom, as it is connected to nothingness, must again be described in terms of consciousness. As will be shown, the transcendence of our consciousness is precisely that which makes us free.
“If someone asks what this nothing is which provides a foundation for freedom, we shall reply that we cannot describe it since it is not, but we can at least hint at its meaning by saying that this nothing is made-to-be by the human being in his relation with himself” (Being 71). Sartre’s clue is to a reflection upon consciousness—in particular, our own Being-for-itself. To say that our being is inherently transcendent means that when we investigate our identity we never find a positive solution, we only discover nothingness—an empty non-being full of pure potential. The best way to understand this is through Sartre’s discussion about the past and future: “Consciousness confronts its past and its future as facing a self which it is in the mode of not-being” (Being 72). When we stand opposite our past and our future we find that we have infinite possibility (and often find ourselves in a state of anguish, according to Sartre). Nothingness has slipped in when we say, “I am not the self which I will be [or have been]” (Being 68).

Furthermore, in the way that we can separate ourselves from who we were and who we will be, we can separate ourselves from the rest of the world—from Being-in-itself and its significance to us and its causal determinism. That is, as Sartre says, we give meaning to things in the world—and to ourselves. The alarm clock goes off and we must wake up, but it is us who gave meaning to the alarm clock in the first place as something which orders us to wake up. When we receive an order from a boss, it is us who has first given him the authority and recognized him as someone whom we must obey (Being 77). Simply put, Sartre writes, “In anguish I apprehend myself at once as totally free and as not being able to derive the meaning of the world except as coming from myself” (Being 78). We create the world, and more importantly, we create ourselves, as we want. This is freedom.

Degrees of Freedom

To simply say that we have freedom is not enough. For there are varying degrees of freedom according to different interpretations of what is meant by the term “free” and according to the philosophical foundation that has gone into finding human nature as one that is free. Within the notion of freedom are a number of implications about what freedom means, what kind of notion of origination is entailed within it, and to what degree it is intelligible. Each of these distinctions allows for a new interpretation of what it means to have free will.

In his book, Neurophilosophy of Free Will, Henrik Walter explains that for each of the three considerations implicit in the notion of freedom there are three interpretations.

The first consideration concerns the definition of Freedom. According to Walter’s distinctions, it at first seems that Sartre’s definition of freedom fits a moderate interpretation: we are free if we are able to do otherwise “in accordance with higher order volitions” (Walter 43). For Sartre, part of avoiding anguish and embracing the freedom that is intrinsic to our being is creating our own “projects,” as he calls them. Then, within the framework of the project which each man and woman create for himself and herself, choices are determined. For example, for a man who has made it his life project to be a good mailman, he is not free to choose not to show up to work when he does not feel like it. He must deliver the mail quickly and accurately—he has no other option if he wants to be a good mailman. It seems, then, that Sartre’s projects are Walter’s higher order volitions and that his interpretation of freedom is, in Walter’s terms, a moderate one.

Returning to Dilman, his discussion of Sartre’s projects again seems to fit what Walter would call a moderate interpretation: “Sartre sees commitment for the future to be a tie which lacks substance and whose only strength is the strength of the person’s determination in the sense of resolve” (191). The future self, as it is a goal which we have made it a project to become, serves as the higher order by which our choices must be made.

However, what Sartre actually has to say about this suggests a different position. In Existentialism Is a Humanism, he explicitly states that “there is no determinism—man is free, man is freedom” (Kaufman 349). This sentence alone warrants significant investigation.

First, the claim “there is no determinism,” as it stands by itself, needs to be qualified. What Sartre means is that there is no determinism for Being-for-itself. Dilman explains, “A thing that exists in itself has no say in what happens to it [and] Sartre attributes this to its lack of consciousness” (190). In other words, pure being is subject to causal law. But as human beings are more than simple matter, they are not bound by causation. “Committing oneself for the future differs radically from causal determinism” (Dilman 190).

Second, the remaining portion of Sartre’s statement is an ontological one, not a metaphysical one. He does more than say that man is free, he says that “man is freedom.” In other words, it is intrinsic to our being—as Being-for-itself—to be free. This is exemplified by the investigation into the way that nothingness arises in consciousness described earlier. Then, Sartre fits into a maximal interpretation—meaning that in identical circumstances, all human beings are free to do otherwise than what they actually do—making him a libertarian in favor of a philosophy that is capable of supporting a radically free will (Walter 43).

The second consideration in qualifying free will is intelligibility. Due to the way that Walter distinguishes between interpretations it is clear that Sartrean freedom is not defined according to a maximal interpretation which says that “acting for understandable reasons is guided by supernatural reasons” (Walter 43). It is inconsistent with the existential atheism to which he ascribes. We turn to Dilman to find that Sartre fits a moderate interpretation where we are intelligible of our freedom in as much as it revolves reflection upon oneself.

Men cannot escape their freedom, Sartre holds, since it is part and parcel of their existence as conscious beings. But the responsibility that goes with it is something they can avoid accepting. Indeed, it is part of man’s freedom that he does not have to accept or shoulder this responsibility. Sartre’s view is that whichever way a man turns he is inevitably responsible because he is free. But he is free not to accept it. Because the responsibility is there as a consequence of his freedom, not accepting it is an evasion and a deception of oneself. Sartre calls it ‘bad faith’ (199).

Our freedom is intelligible to us in so much as in self-reflection we find that we are free. However, being capable of self-reflection is one problem that people have in finding their freedom intelligible to them; and choosing to accept or avoid the intelligibility is another.

Critical Analysis

The third consideration in qualifying free will is origination. There is considerable room for dissent from the idea that consciousness is able to separate itself from the causal determination of the natural world of Being-in-itself. However, Dilman points out that Sartre borrows from the Cartesian understanding of the will that is “immune from causal determination, and therefore, is self determining” (194). He continues, saying, “the environment or circumstances of our life do not impinge on us causally, but through what we make of them in our appraisals, through the significances we attribute to them” (193). It is undeniable that there are certain aspects of our lives set up for us as we enter the world and that we did not choose: our parents, the way we are raised, our physical features, etc. The point that Dilman makes is that what we make of the pre-established circumstances of our surroundings determines our choices. Then, our freedom becomes a kind of self-determined autonomy. We are both the source of our choices and the ones who carry them out, meaning that in terms of origination as it qualifies the free will, Sartre fits into a maximal interpretation. Not only does the “originator equal the executor;” not only do our actions originate “in accordance with one’s self;” but we experience an “initial causation by a transcendental self” (Walter 43).

Much of Sartre’s philosophy rests on his atheism which turns out to be an important part of his notion of freedom. For, part of the nothingness of man is that we are made with no nature. That is, there is no infinite, all-powerful consciousness which created us with a plan. Such is the famous catchphrase, “existence precedes essence.” Sartre uses a counter example to show how we are not goal-oriented beings a priori. A human being creates a knife with the specific purpose of making it so that it is able to slice through bread, or butter, or whatever object he or she desires. So, the design of the knife occurs in accordance with its intended purpose. Human beings, on the other hand, are not made in this way because there is no God which has designed us as such (Kaufman 348).

His argument for the non-existence of an infinite consciousness, again, relies on phenomenology. Suppose there was a consciousness that preceded all other beings. If that is so, then that consciousness does not depend on any other beings. However, consciousness is always a consciousness of something other than itself. This is something that Edmund Husserl, who is largely considered one of the founding fathers of phenomenology, would agree with: the most peculiar and identifying characteristic of consciousness is that it points to something other than itself (Transcendence 44, 51). Then, returning to the argument, the supernal consciousness would both depend and not depend on other existing things at the same time which is impossible (Being 24).

With that said, Sartre’s atheism is a subject of much criticism. One popular argument against atheism is the first cause theory. That is, in the search for the origination of all existing things, there must be some first cause—the unmoved mover. Without a metaphysical entity that is itself immutable and un-caused, philosophical inquiry into the origination of all things falls into an infinite regress. It seems, then, that Sartre has a problem explaining how his atheistic ontology is consistent with the very fact that there is such a thing as pure being. For, Being-in-itself, even as lump-less matter is subject to the first cause theory.
The solution, it seems, is that Sartre’s atheism and the first cause theory are not incompatible. In fact, Sartre may not necessarily deny the potential truth of the idea that there is a first cause prior to all other things which exist in the world as we know it today. Rather, the point he wants to make is that whatever it is, it is not a conscious being. In this way, Sartre upholds the most important consequence of his atheism: the lack-of a consciousness which has created us in a teleological manner.

Conclusion


We are human beings, so we are free. This is not a conclusion from metaphysical premises, but from an ontological investigation into the phenomenology of consciousness. That is, it is intrinsic to the non-positional consciousness that occurs in self-reflection that our true “self” flees from us. Its transcendence causes a nothingness which is, according to Sartre, freedom in a radical sense: freedom to do otherwise in identical circumstances; freedom not only to act within our own “projects,” but to choose them for our self; and the freedom to understand the level of our freedom.

Naturally, such a construction has important ethical consequences. The point of the phenomenological ontology is not to say that we posit the world and are, therefore, not responsible for our actions. Rather, our existence implies moral responsibility from the beginning. If man is free to do as he wishes, then every action is not only a free choice, but a statement that all other men ought to act in the same way (Kaufman 350). “In fashioning myself I fashion man” (Kaufman 351). The libertarian perspective of Jean-Paul Sartre says that not only are we radically and unequivocally free, but moral responsibility is an ontological part of our being.








Works Cited
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. New York: Washington Square Press, 1992.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism is a Humanism. Ed. Kaufman.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Transcendence of the Ego. New York. Noonday Press, 1957.
Dilman, Ilham. Free Will. New York. Routledge, 1999. 190-205.
Kaufman, Walter. Existentialism: From Dostoevsky to Sartre. New York. Penguin Group, 1956.
345 – 368.
Walter, Henrik. Neurophilosophy of Free Will. London. MIT Press, 2009. 1-73.

The Problem of Evil

"Master of the Universe, You declare me guilty? Guilty, me? Guilty of what? Of having been caught? Imagine a thief apprehended in a forbidden garden; he could tell the watchman: My job is to steal and yours is to prevent me from stealing; if I succeeded in entering the garden, whose fault is that? You are the watchman of the world. If You did not wish me to kill my brother, why did You not intervene?" said Cain.

With Every Day

www.joeygerber.com/witheveryday.html

With Every Day

I had a dream when I was only 9
I'd be a pitcher for the Braves
And they'd pull me from the bullpen
Every time they need a save
But that all changed
When I discovered I
I couldn't throw a strike to save my life
And now the only save i make is in my wallet every night.

i had a dream when i was 17
i'd be a rockstar and i'd know
what the women taste like
in every city that i'd go
But that all changed
When I woke up one day
And found I lost my voice
Now I write shitty poetry
'cause it's my only choice.

I had a dream when I turned 21
I'd finally see the end
Of everything I'm supposed to want
And a big and comfortable bed
But it's a lie.
I only made it up and left it in my head
So I could feel A little better
With every day I wasn't dead.

Don't Chew With Your Mouth Open

One of the earliest memories I have about my father--one of my earliest memories in any respect, actually--happens at the breakfast table. It was at his old house along the mountain preserve, before he married my step-mother. In other words, it was a simple time. My father lived similarly to the way I live now: just because I wore one T-shirt today doesn't mean I can't wear it again before washing it. Who decided that one use is all our clothes can handle anyway? In the living room was an old, red reclining chair so old and worn down by cat scratches that it literally was held together by duct tape. Anyways, at breakfast one morning, I happened to be slurping up my cereal--most likely Cracklin' Oat Bran--extra loud. Dad, who was always quick to make sure that I learned my manners (as was my mother, for that matter) said to me, "Joey, close your mouth when you're chewing your food. You sound like a cow." Of course, my four or five-year-old self minded his orders without a second thought. To this day I am quick to judge someone who chews with their mouth open, but then I remember: they must not have had such a great Dad like me who knew that other people didn't like it when you munched on your food like an irrational animal. But now that I'm older I think, We are the only species on the planet that is so peticular about insignificant things! Seriously, I will admit that I judge people who chew with their mouth open because of the way I was brought up. But how sad is that! We are willing to disregard someone simply because of the way they eat their food. Cows chew with their mouth open. So do dogs. You don't see cows or dogs fighting amongst themselves, weeding out prospective mates based on their eating habbits, the way they dress, or how often they floss their teeth. Give me a break!

So, what's different about us, as human beings, that sets us apart from every other animal on the planet? Well, that's easy. Our intellect. Even the early Greeks recognized that we are different from our simple-minded, animal friends. And it is for that reason that we are guilty of the Pathetic Fallacy. The Pathetic Fallacy is a term I learned reading about the history ofr Buddhism. Basically, it is the (false) idea that human beings are at the center of corporeal life in the universe. In other words, we assume that any history of the universe is really just a history of human beings. But how wrong we are!

My point in all of this, as I hope becomes clear, is to show that reason, that which separates us from all other life on Earth, is a flaw to our species. It is a detrimental mutation that already is leading to the downfall of mankind, if not the entire Earth as our habitat. In brief words, take a look at all these "Save the Earth" initiatives. They are all in place because of what WE have done to the planet. You don't see elephants trying to save the earth because of how they too often leave the water running when they brush those big white tusks. And you don't see monkeys forming coalitions to recycle in order to halt how quickly consumer products become waste. HUMAN BEINGS ARE AT THE ROOT AND, WITHOUT A DOUBT, THE CAUSE FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF INTELLIGENT LIFE. In other words, we are our own worst enemy.

My hope is not only to point out that life sucks and we only have ourselves to blame. Rather it is to show that nothing is as important as we think it is. Nothing. In as much as we are a product of nature, the tragedy that is the destruction of our planet is also a part of nature. It is natural. It is the way it's supposed to be. So, what does this mean for the way in which we're supposed to live? Let's find out.

What Does It Take to be Good?

I just finished reading The Good Woman of Setzuan by Bertolt Brecht. It is a play about a woman named Shen Te who opens a tobacco shop in the impoverished city of Setzuan after three gods in search of just one good person in the world overpay her for letting them stay at her place. Before the gods stayed with her Shen Te was a prostitute. The gods hope that with some extra money she will be able to stop living such an amoral life and be the one good person they are looking for in order to prove that all of humanity has not fallen to the temptations of greed, lust, and power.

What the play dramatizes is the paradox of morality: We are driven to be good people, to do good deeds, to act selflessly. But this often is at our detriment. Shen Te gives all she has to help others. Despite barely making the rent for her Tobacco shop she houses every poor, homeless person who comes into her shop looking for shelter. She gives rice to the hungry and is willing to give away her rent money so that others may start careers. But all of this lends her in debt, in trouble with the law, and at the mercy of a thousand hungry beggars nagging her for food and shelter like baby birds at their mother with a mouthful of worms.

So, the question is: what does it mean to be good? Does being good mean sacrifice? But if you sacrifice yourself to do good then you aren't alive anymore to do any good. Is that our purpose in life--to do only enough good deeds for others so that we die at our own hand, as a result of our own selflessness? It seems that if you force morality on our existence that this is the only outcome?

It has slowly become a steady belief of mine that at the end of the day the greatest and the only responsibility you have is to yourself. For a lot of people that is hard to deal with: mothers, priests, and people with no backbone. The simple scenario is such: a killer hands you a gun and tells you to kill your best friend or he will kill you. And the simple solution is that you should kill your friend. There is no rationale that will hold you accountable for the death of your friend. There is no creed of morality that makes shooting your friend unjustifiable.

The problem here is that The Good Woman of Setzuan poses good actions as ones that are always in opposition to your own well-being. But that is obviously not the case. Rich people donate to charities so that they can get a larger tax return: everybody wins! But when it comes to a morality that requires you to always do good--even in the face of your demise--you have to ask what's more important: your life or your made up ideas about goodness.

Of course, whether your life is important at all, or at least any more than a speck of dust, is still up for debate.

Nothing Is Impossible

Michio Kaku’s book, Physics of the Impossible, should really be titled Physics of the Possible. After reading through his examinations of the history, study, and future of many highly debated topics—including time travel, teleportation, telepathy, parallel universes, and more—the general message Kaku conveys is that very few things are physically impossible. Kaku breaks up his discussions into three classifications. Neither Class I nor Class II impossibilities violate the known laws of physics. Things like time travel, invisibility, telepathy, and psychokinesis are all things for which the only reason they are not around now is our limited technology. There are only two examples that Kaku presents as Class III impossibilities—those that violate known laws of physics. That is to say, in general, most of what we can imagine is possible with our understanding of physics. Our imaginations may not become reality for decades, centuries, or even millennia, though. Even so, for a Class III impossibility to become a possibility, it would take a shocking shift in our understanding of physics. But never once does Kaku say that such a shift is impossible.

There are so many topics Kaku covers in his book that it would be impossible and impractical to talk about all of them. Some of the most stimulating discussions include those of telepathy, psychokinesis, time travel, and parallel universes. The conversation here will be limited to telepathy, extraterrestrial life, psychokinesis, and, though it was not included in the book, the existence of God.

Telepathy

Energy is what keeps us alive. As human beings, we use up 80-100 watts just by being alive. To sit up, eat, and exercise all require more energy, as does thinking. So thoughts are really just energy. Kaku mentions in his chapter on telepathy that physicists first considered brain activity to be nothing more than the transmission of electrical signals. Reading minds, then, is only as difficult as interpreting the electrical signals inside brains, which has proven to be very difficult. The signals are very weak and our brain has no antenna, if you will, in order to receive information from another person’s brain.

Work has been done to use machines to tell what people are thinking. MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machines allow doctors and scientists to pinpoint what part of the brain is most active. In this way, it is possible to monitor an MRI of someone’s brain that would reveal, at most, the general topic somebody is concentrating on. For example, if a subject was remembering a time from his early childhood, the MRI would show the part of the brain responsible for memory to be most active. However, getting specific thoughts is very difficult in this way. Some scientists have thought of making a dictionary of what the brain looks like as it thinks about every possible thing you could think about, Kaku says. Of course, the first criticism for this method is the data necessary to create such a reference table is nearly infinite.

With some knowledge about magnetism, I think there may be another method for making telepathy into a real phenomenon. Recall that the brain is, in simplest terms, a transmission of electrical signals. In other words, the actions of the brain are nothing more than moving charges. Moving charges, when moved in close proximity to other moving charges, create a magnetic force. Of course, Kaku already mentioned that the signals transmitted in our brain are very weak. He says that we can only concentrate so hard, meaning that we are, more or less, powerless in terms of making those signals stronger. To make matters worse, magnetic forces are dependent on the distance between moving charges. It goes by the square root, so as the distance between them is doubled, the force diminishes by 4 times, for example. This means that our brains would have to be incredibly close to a set of moving charges.

But much of what I’ve heard about our brain is that we only use a small fraction of its potential. Hence, if we were able to train ourselves into using the entire potential of our brain, perhaps we could move enough charges in order to create a magnetic force.

If this is possible, reading minds becomes only a matter of interpreting the magnetic force produced by the moving charges in your brain. How that could be done is unfamiliar to me, but again, one thing is clear: the phenomenon is dependent on distance. If you were to develop a way to interpret the magnetic force, you would have to be in a relatively close proximity to the brain which you are trying to analyze.

Psychokinesis

The same line of thought occurs to me in terms of psychokinesis—the ability to make objects move with your mind. Within close proximity to other moving charges, the brain could produce a magnetic field in which things could be moved. The problem with this is that, unlike telepathy, it is not just a matter of amplifying the movement of charges in our heads and interpreting the force produced. Rather, moving objects of different masses requires different forces. Since brain potential is unknown, it seems difficult to imagine what kind of brain activity is necessary to, for example, levitate a pen on the table and move it over to a piece of paper and have it write for you. What we do know, though, is that the ability to move objects with our minds depends on their proximity to our mind and their mass.

In his chapter on psychokinesis, Kaku discusses significant advances in the study of the field. A number of experiments have successfully shown that controlling our thoughts can allow us to move things in reality so long as our brains are connected to what we are moving. This is done through wires. A Brown University neuroscientist, John Donoghue, has developed a tool called BrainGate. Wires connected to a person’s brain allow him or her to send electrical signals to objects outside of his mind, such as computers. Kaku mentions one of Donoghue’s patients, Mathew Nagle, a quadriplegic who “can now change the channels on his TV, adjust the volume, open and close a prosthetic hand, draw a crude circle, move a computer cursor, play a video game, and even read e-mail” (96). If those electrical signals can be made wireless then psychokinesis has essentially become a reality. However, being able to manipulate a digital world is much different than moving my pen or making a chair fly through a window just by thinking it.

Extraterrestrial Life

One thing reading Physics of the Impossible does is it makes you realize how incredibly possible it is that there is extraterrestrial life in the universe. Almost as quickly as Kaku introduces the idea, though, he shoots it down. At first, the very situation of our existence is evidence enough that life could exist somewhere other than Earth. There is no end to space that we can see. There are an endless number of stars and probably planets. With so many stars and planets to rotate them, you’d think that there is at least a tiny likelihood of alien life somewhere in the universe. Even if the odds were one billion to one, our planet is that one one-billionth that made possibility reality. If it happened once it can happen again, right? The answer is a qualified yes.

The truth is that our very existence is, in essence, a miracle. Kaku compiles a list of what he calls “fortuitous accidents” that were necessary in order to create life on Earth. Among them are a strong magnetic field that blocks life-destroying radiation, sustainable planetary rotation, and the Earth’s position in the “Goldilocks zone”—we are just close enough to the sun to stay warm, but not so close that we turn into a burning ball of fire. Still more are the presence of a moon, which stabilizes the Earth’s spin, and the presence of Jupiter as a defense from dangerous meteors and comets that could wipe out all life on Earth if an impact with a particularly large one were to occur. If just one of those conditions did not come to fruition, life as we know it would have never existed. That, coupled with the likelihood of finding a planet that is the right size and contains the fundamental building block of life, water, makes finding extraterrestrial life strikingly difficult. Hence, the likelihood of another life form may be less than one billion to one; nevertheless, it is still possible. It happened once, it can happen again.

God

One thing Kaku’s book does not really discuss is our ability to study the existence of God. However, some of the phenomenon explained allow for a conversation to occur. First, the “fortuitous accidents” that have occurred to allow life to exist on Earth may lead some people to believe that the accidents are not actually accidents but the result of a grand master plan caused by God. As it has been shown, the number and seemingly random conditions necessary to create a planet capable of sustaining life makes finding another one incredibly unlikely, especially with our limited technology. The same idea leads one to think that without help from a rational creator, our home is impossible. The whole system is too complex to just happen on its own, it seems.

The simple truth, though, is that such an idea cannot be proven. Just because it seems unlikely doesn’t mean it can’t happen. When the Boston University Terriers were down by two goals with one minute left to play in the NCAA national championship, the likelihood of scoring two goals before ending the game was incredibly low. But it happened nonetheless. Hence, unlikely does not equal impossible.

Secondly, ideas about the origin of the universe can be proven, and that is a topic Kaku addresses near the end of his book. Scientists are working to develop satellites “capable of detecting gravitational waves emitted less than a trillionth of a second after the big bang” (289). The idea is that with a picture of the universe a fraction of an instant after creation, we might be able to rationally deduce the conditions prior to existence. “The point is,” Kaku writes, “that in the next few decades there should be enough data pouring in from gravity wave detectors in space to differentiate between the various pre-big bang theories” (291). So, we may not be able to say right now whether our existence is the result of an unplanned accident, or if it is simply God playing with a Large Hadron Collider. But, like the underlying theme of Kaku’s book, there is very little that is impossible with time and advancements in technology.

Two Poems

Sleep is like a drug to me;
A fix; a mere necessity;
Each day's added symmetry;
A grand and blissful symphony.

Sleep is but a temptress;
The soft, subtle sarcophagus;
A sleek and fleeting precipice;
An addicting dash of lifelessness.

Sleep is thought the enemy;
A glimpse of glistened infamy.
But sleep is such a friend to me;
My rescue from reality.

---------------------------

Never shall I wake
Nor another breath I take.
this is not the deal I made.
I did not ask for what you gave.

Let me fly the atmosphere
And watch the glowing sun appear.
Perch me on a mountain top
And feed me ocean's every drop.

Let me sleep forever more
Like the name my grave stone bore.

Creation

Ok. So, life is meaningless. Don't ask me for the explanation on that one. Just grant me that assumption for a second.

I know, it's like a joke now. "Why bother, life is meaningless anyway." But that's not it. It's not that life is meaningless and therefore has no value. No, meaning and value are two different things. Existence and a goal are two different things. You can have value without meaning but you can't have meaning without value. You can have existence without a goal, but you can't have a goal without existence. Well, there isn't meaning, there isn't a goal. But there is value, there is existence.

So, what do we value? I'm not sure what the correct answer is, but I'll tell you what I think it is: creation. What greater thing can you do than create something--to make something come into existence. To bring forth something from nothing. How could you ask to do anything better than that. It's simply miraculous that power we have. I can write a song. I can put words on paper. I can build the house that I live in. I can give life to the children that live in it too. I speak words. Fuck it, I can make up my own words. I can do so many things. Things that were never done before; completely original things. What is better than that?

So, just because there is nothing about us as human beings that gives us a purpose, a meaning, or a focus; just because we aren't teleological beings like JC and all his disciples like you to believe doesn't mean that life isn't worth living, right? There are still things to create. Who needs a god when you can be god?

The Origin of the Universe

I have a number of thoughts about the origin of the universe. I'm not sure which one is right.

First, if you look at the world from a causal perspective, then you get the common "first cause" theory; that something comes from something else and so on and so forth. However, at some point you get to the end of the line. For a lot of people, this is where God comes in. He is the unmoved mover. A lot of people just assume that anything that caused all existence must be God. It must be something spectacular. Maybe. Maybe not.

The problem with this is you can then ask the question, "what caused God?" And then you fall into a series of unending questions..."what caused what caused God? What caused what caused what caused God?" and so on ad infinitum. So, instead of admitting God's infinite power and suggesting that he has just "always existed," that he is the "unmoved mover," I ask why can't the universe have the same spectacular property of just simply existing? If there is something that can simply exist without a cause, why can't it be the universe? Why do we insist on attributing it to a fabulous God who we, as human beings, have dramaticized, romanticized, and used as our justification for war. It just seems a lot easier to me.

It might be difficult to admit that something as simple as matter just existed before all other thigns, so I wish to suggest something else.

See, one of the most fundamental laws of nature is Newton's law, Force=mass(acceleration). Another way to look at this is to say that if there is no acceleration, there is no force. Furthermore, if there is an acceleration, then there must be a force, something that caused the acceleration. When we look at the universe we see a lot of accelerations, hence there are a lot of forces that have occured over time. So where did the first forces come from? This is essentially the same question as above..."what caused the first force? And what caused what caused the first force?" However, in this case, we actually have an answer: gravity. Gravity is responsible for just about everything. It is the reason we orbit the sun, and the moon us. It is the reason scientists believe in the Big Bang Theory. It is the reason that asteroids crash into our planet in an unusually rhythmic pattern. It's also the reason that physicists say that our universe is expanding. And yes, it's always been there.

So why do we attribute infinite existence to something like a God when we can just attribute it to gravity? Yeah, I don't know either.

The Problem With Agnosticism (An Excerpt)

You want to know something about who I am, I suppose. Other than my name and that I’m some sick fuck who likes to poison himself. Well, I’m a lot like Clint Eastwood in every movie he’s ever made. I like to think I’m a hard ass. I’m set in my ways. I’ll tell you when I don’t like you, but I won’t tell you when I do. I think I know everything. Wait, scratch that last one. This is where I differ from Clint (apart from the fact that he’s wrinkly like my fingers after a long bath and I’m still young and handsome). I think I know everything because I admit that I don’t know everything. That doesn’t sound right, I know. But we’ve been over this. The biggest mistake you can make is to pretend to know something you don’t. So the wisest of us all is he who realizes his ignorance. That is me. You say that doesn’t make sense, right. Wisdom is a result of knowledge, so you must be more than ignorant to be wise, is your point. However, I respectfully disagree; that is, unless you push me at this. Then I’m just going to curse at you under my breath and give you the silent treatment. See, I know that I don’t know. Hence, my ignorance is really knowledge. Because even though I don’t know, I know that I don’t know. Realization of ignorance is knowledge. You may bow down and kiss my feet now. Call me the wise man if you will.

Good Evening.

So, I'm here.
I'm not sure how to introduce this except to just do it. So, it ought to make sense with time. The important thing to know, though, is that I do this for me, not for anyone else. I love feedback and the sharing of ideas. But at the end of the day, I'm not trying to come to conclusions that people want to hear. I'm looking for what I believe to be reality.