The envelope of your death, hand delivered.

Opening it wouldn't be a straightforward decision, and receiving it isn't a far-out possibility.

Stipulate that God, or perhaps one of his unimpeachable representatives, sends you a very special, albeit, sealed envelope.  You are aware of this special envelope's origin, and upon observing its delivery information, no doubt written in fine Gothic calligraphy, you see a subject line which reads, "The date of your death."  Mercifully, someone has informally written, "Don't worry, it's not necessarily that soon."  Perhaps you're even told that opening the envelope is completely optional. Question --

Would you open the envelope?

As I think about this, there are couple of issues that come immediately to mind. First, people might vary on whether such information about the exact time of one's death would contribute or detract from the meaning of life.

For example, perhaps an Oklahoman has always dreamed of traveling to Maine, but upon opening the envelope, finds that s/he will be dead within four hours. Here a life-long wish has been decisively subverted, as one cannot physically accomplish the desired goal within the short time left in one's life. But to vary this example a bit, suppose upon opening the envelope, s/he finds that death will occur a month later. S/he then decides to immediately pack up the family and take the trip. Here the parameters of a life-long wish would be just as decisively fulfilled, since what might have been delayed, and hence at risk for never occurring, comes instead to immediate fruition. In the first case, the knowledge detracts; but, in the second case, the knowledge contributes to life's meaning.

As another example, perhaps a father of three children has always worried of dying in middle age of heart-attack or stroke, since there is an overwhelming medical history of these events in his family. But upon opening the envelope, finds that he will live to the ripe old age of 91. Here such knowledge would greatly contribute to serenity of mind and, no doubt, to financial stability, since term or whole life insurance costs would seem to be of a far less pressing matter in the face of such knowledge. One can imagine varying this case for a physically-fit, even athletic young mother who, to her horror, discovers she will die two months hence. Such knowledge would hardly contribute to serenity of mind, though some might argue it's better to know than not, since some amount of planning for such a catastrophe is better than none. Here, in the first case of the father, the knowledge enhances; but, in the second case of the mother, the knowledge detracts from life's meaning.

These kind of cases cases where absolute knowledge is available about one's death are not as far-fetched as one might think, since for some diseases there are very well-established statistics for how long one can expect to live. If one contracts disease X, and studies have shown that less than 5% of patients survive for three years or more with X, and that the median survival time is one year, then one of God's most reliable representatives, Science, seemingly has already delivered plenty of bulk mail to many persons who already face terminal medical conditions. Indeed, many 90+-year-old people who carefully reason about their future, and who fortunately experience a relatively stable health situation, are already in this bulk-mail situation. So, receiving such mail is not as far-out a possibility as one might think.


O.

REFERENCES

[image] me

Rethinking Abortion in Light of Advancing Technology

Advances in technology will eventually change how one prioritizes which ethical "rights" get invoked for or against having an abortion.
{ Audio .mp3 (7 min.)  of this essay } For my Ethics class I regularly re-read Mary Ann Warren's 1973 article, "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion."[1] Although it is well argued, I can't agree with every sub-conclusion she draws which would be required to justify her overall position -- hardly a surprise, of course, given my pious commitments.

In a postscript to the article, she attempts to show that her argument for the moral permissibility of abortion does not commit her to infanticide. Why not? Because after the infant is born, "it does mark the end of its mother's right to determine its fate." I have two points of disagreement with her on this matter of infanticide -- one minor, the other more substantial, but which is somewhat related to the minor issue.

First, I have never been clear on where alleged moral "rights" come from, at least if there is no all-knowing issuer and (eventually) absolute enforcer of those rights (otherwise known as God). In contrast, political rights are far more easy to understand and apply: Find the king, or the Constitution, or some other governmental authority, and then draw some sort of reference and subsequent enforcement from there. So my minor disagreement with Warren is that talk of moral rights only introduces further confusion into the abortion debate.

Second, even if one were to acknowledge some sort of discernible rights being affirmed or violated, I was curious about how the following aside from Warren would interplay with such rights:

"Indeed if abortion could be performed without killing the fetus, [the mother] would never possess the right to have the fetus destroyed, for the same reasons that she has no right to have an infant destroyed."

What might it mean to perform an abortion without destroying a fetus?

 At first glance we might worry that just as murdering someone without killing them is impossible, so committing an abortion without destroying the fetus is likewise, for semantic reasons, impossible. But this is not quite a correct understanding of the term, because the very word "abortion" just means the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, and does not, in addition, also mean the deliberate termination of a fetus's life. As we currently practice it, the act of abortion indeed causes the termination of a fetus's life, but that is merely an association due to our poor technology, not due to the prior logically entailing letter. Compare our use of the word "surgery" today as compared to times past. In the past, surgery always caused pain, but today we are fortunate to know that the association of these two terms is not one of logical entailment, as every anesthesiologist can attest.

With this semantic confusion behind us, we are now in a position to think about abortions, but without fetal termination. Perhaps we can imagine a specialized vat whereby we place a fetus within so as to grow it to viability. Advances in robotic surgery would allow doctors to remove the whole placenta quickly enough to

support the oxygen and nutrient environment which keeps the fetus viable, and then to reattach it to the artificial vat support system. In this case the woman would have terminated her pregnancy (accurately called an "abortion") but the fetus would still remain viable. Or again, perhaps the vat technology is too difficult a feat, but advances in biology allow a transplantation of just a small portion of the placenta, along with its accompanying fetus. Likewise, per as earlier, we would have terminated the pregnancy, but with the advantage of the fetus remaining viable.

In her postscript, Warren supplies two arguments on why infanticide is wrong (1) for reasons analogous to those which make it wrong to want to destroy natural resources or great works of art; or (2) for reasons whereby people value infants -- such as when foster parents who would want the infant would be deprived, or when greater society, valuing infants and willing to step up and support them, finance orphanages through the tax base. However, under advanced technology circumstances, these same issues would apply to the woman losing her "right" to commit an abortion, were the growth vat or the transplant biology advanced enough to remove the infant from the woman. Using Warrens own reasoning, just as the woman does not control the right to commit infanticide after the birth, neither would the woman control the right of feticide in utero.

Warren wants to say that the rights of actual people trump the rights of potential people, but I am unclear which rights are being mentioned. My suspicion is that there are conditions where the right of the woman's quality of life could very well be subordinate to the rights of a fetus to have life at all. Suppose that the surgery were no more troublesome than having a mole removed, or taking a few hours out of one's day for an anesthetic nap (for surgery), similar to colonoscopy procedure. Under these conditions there would be minimal quality of life degradation. Even if one acknowledges the presence of moral rights, there must be a hierarchy to these rights to make them workable, as both scholars and jurisprudence practitioners of legal rights have recognized.

Earlier in her article Warren wants to suggest that an actual person's rights (in this case the mother) always trump a potential person's rights (the fetus). I don't see why this should be accepted a priori. Indeed, the mother should not be presumed as the only actual person with rights in place. Instead, I suggest that it is the empirical circumstances and consequences which allow us to formulate the hierarchy of already-acknowledged rights. If one grants this suggestion, the consequences of the mother's degradation of quality of life could eventually be so low in the advanced technology cases mentioned that one should assess the fetus's right to life as super-ordinate over the mother's right to quality of life. If so, then I conclude that we shall soon be rethinking abortion in light of advancing fetal support technology.

O.

REFERENCES

Images: Header image taken from article, Soraya Chemaly "What Do Artificial Wombs Mean for Women?" 2/23/2012 RH Reality Check Blogsite (Accessed 4/8/2014).  Inset image taken from Green Diary - Green Living Blogsite. (Accessed 4/8/2014)

[1] Ann Warren "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion" [.pdf] The Monist: An International Quarterly Journal of General Philosophical (Peru, IL, 1973).

Uncle Philly on Cyborgs

Uncle Philly

On the down side, Uncle Philly's crotchety; but, on the up side, he's worth knowing.

31 reasons why institutions exist to do what they do

Just why institutions exist to do what they do isn't so easy to discern. 

I had an undergraduate Philosophy professor who, earlier in his career, had pastored a large church in the northwestern U.S. in the midst of some of the most turbulent times of the 1960s.  (I believe it was in Oregon.) It grew from virtually nothing to around 500 members, and he confessed he never quite knew just why.  To the consternation of many, he regularly turned-down speaking engagements and book offers from people wanting him to come and reveal his "secret" for church growth.  He was as understated a man as he was insightful.  He also studied some under a well-known philosopher with the enviable career name of John Wisdom. As is often the case with undergraduate studies, one remembers the style and methods of instruction almost to the complete exclusion of content. But from those studies, I do remember a remark he made about institutions, and it has been rattling around in my mind for many years. Lately, I went casting [1] about trying to interpret what his quote meant, which I note at the end of this list.

01. Institutions exist to serve man.
02. Institutions exist to classify us.
03. Institutions exist to impart stability.
04. Institutions exist to tell us how we can help.
05. Institutions exist to reduce transaction costs.
06. Social institutions exist to satisfy social needs.
07. Institutions exist to further the ends of individuals.
08. Institutions exist to reduce uncertainty in the world.
09. Institutions exist to solve the problems peoples face.
10. Institutions exist to check dangerous human appetites.
11. Institutions exist to organize people toward a purpose.
12. Institutions exist to actually provide responsive services.
13. Institutions exist to support and condone the "status quo".
14. Institutions exist to help solve collective action problems.
15. Institutions exist to reduce uncertainty in human interaction.
16. Institutions exist to constrain state power vis-`a-vis their citizens.
17. Institutions exist to govern the inter-dependencies among smaller units.
18. Institutions exist to reduce uncertainties involved in human interaction.
19. Institutions exist to provide order, which makes self-determination possible.
20. Institutions exist to serve and strengthen the society of which they are part.
21. Institutions exist to make binding decisions when competing interests are at odds.
22. Institutions exist to mediate tensions and maintain equilibrium between competing interests.
23. Institutions exist to keep themselves alive, make some people rich, and control the rest of us.
24. Institutions exist to pass on current knowledge and to add to the knowledge we humans already have.
25. Institutions exist to perpetuate themselves just as they are. The goal is that they will never change.
26. Institutions exist to serve the delivery of programs and services that move the people toward the vision.
27. Institutions emerge and persist because they resolve some problem of survival and adaptation faced by a population.
28. Institutions exist to help us out of situations that are too painful for people and entire communities to contemplate.
29. Social, political and economic institutions exist to serve a small class of elite much to the detriment of human progress.
30. Institutions exist to ensure a Pareto optimal outcome-—that is, outcomes where no one can be made better off without making someone worse off.
31. Institutions exist to perpetuate their existence and promote their agenda, to funnel power in specific directions, with the assumption that their existence is valuable and necessary.

And, of course, to the credit of my old Philosophy teacher, the best one:

00. The only real rule is that "institutions exist to perpetuate themselves."

Okay, maybe it's 32 reasons, but 00 seems awfully close to "bachelors exist to marry no one."  I wonder if he was pulling my leg?

O.


Notes

[1] I don't claim to have come-up with any of these, but merely did a Google search and spent way too much time plucking and pasting them into a text file, much like a boy might put a beetle in a box, only to forget what it looks like once it's in there.

Philosophy Professor vs. Humanities Editor

Plenty of room for complaint on both sides.

I was watching a video[1] where two scholars (a philosopher and a humanities editor) were giving short papers (or, more accurately, contrasting stances) on whether there is philosophical progress in intellectual culture. A couple of other people made summary comments as well.

It was an enlightening polemical contrast, though it seemed like the humanities editor really didn't understand what professional philosophers actually attempt to do.  However, he well understood how professional philosophers write badly. Furthermore, he rightly understood how often professional philosophers regularly publish irrelevant B.S (mostly, on my view, as result of publish or perish hiring and retention policies implemented by market-driven universities).

I wouldn't actually say the video was worth a full sitting of an hour, unless one happened to be interested in this issue.  But there was a single comment posted below the video which itself made the time investment worth it.

Posted by the nickname "melektaus," it was as follows:

"What did I learn watching this? That journalists are people with no ideas and the ability to express them, and philosophers are people with ideas and no ability to express them."

O.


REFERENCES

[image] "Do-Si-Do" maxwaugh.com (Accessed, Oct. 1, 2011)

[1] Jason Stanley, videoist "Philosophical Progress and Intellectual Culture" at Harvard/ANU Profess conference Vimeo Sept. 21, 2011 (Accessed Oct. 1, 2011) [ Jason Stanely and Carlin Romano were the main interlocutors.]

[*] Philosopher Peter Ludlow gives a more optimisic take on this bifurcation problem, essentially arguing that philosophers need their own technical vocabulary to achieve progress on subtle and hard-to-solve philosophical problems. His response is here.

On which woman is less oppressed: bikini lady or abaya lady

Both are thinking a male-dominated culture has harmed the other, but one of these assessments is far more accurate than the other.

Is it really true that the women in this cartoon are both equally suffering in a male-dominated culture?  Actually, it's FAR from true: if the bikini woman takes off her bikini and puts on regular clothes, no one in her secular nation beats her.  In contrast, if the abaya woman takes off her abaya and puts on regular clothes, the religious police (known as the muttawwa) in her Muslim nation may beat her.  So, the bikini woman is far, far better off.  Again, since the bikini woman has far more liberty as a citizen, she is easily in the better position to mange whatever male domination may be present.

I imagine some would object that the bikini woman is actually more oppressed, since she doesn't know how much she's being dominated, something along the lines like-unto when children don't know when or how much they are being dominated.  However, in reply, (i) children cannot reason well and are rightly seen as not understanding when they are oppressed.  But adult women, especially adult women with a basic education and with equal voting opportunities in their culture, are able understand better when they are oppressed. So, the bikini woman likely understands her situation better than the abaya woman.  Also, (ii) many women in abaya-enforced cultures are not given basic education.  Thus, the abaya woman, not the bikini woman, is actually the more oppressed of the two. Therefore, and yet again, the bikini woman is easily in the better position to manage any male domination situations in life.

O.

"The Core of Evil": Edgar Allan Poe Updated for the 21st Century

"The Core of Evil": Edgar Allan Poe Updated for the 21st Century


I. Preface

(Audio version) Because the English language, like all languages, evolves over time, sometimes even the best-written works can slowly become inaccessible to modern readers. Advances in science and technology give even well-attested words different connotations. Add to this the challenge of reading Victorian Era prose (1837-1901), and some works by classic authors can appear especially opaque. In this close paraphrase, I have made only a minimum number of changes necessary to bring the author's meaning forward into today's categories of thought. Where a change is made, it is to make the original thought more engaging, and thereby more accessible, to today's basic world-view than it could otherwise be when given the original work. Ultimately, the deepest and most insightful writers about the human condition take only the slightest tweaks to bring their positions back with a vengeance.

II. Introduction

As a Philosopher of Mind, I was immediately struck that Poe is offering something like an analysis of consciousness in his The Imp of the Perverse, an essay which initially addresses psychology-like themes but which then transitions into a short-story. It appears that freewill, non-conscious (or, perhaps, sub-conscious) processing, and personal identity issues seemingly all make appearances within this work. In Poe's time, the relationship between mind and brain was not understood, and it is only haphazardly understood even today, if at all, and with many controversies at immediate issue for anyone who cares to skim the literature. Phrenology, transcendentalism, and various strains of religious metaphysics all melded together into victorian folk-views of mind, which persons would have been perfectly comfortable talking about ghosts, spirits, and other such (to our minds) Halloween-appropriate entities.

-- B. Montgomery 7/9/2009 ]

III. "The Core of Evil"

In the consideration of the mental faculties and neuro- impulses -- of the basic movements within the human "soul," to use an antique term, the popular notions of psychology have failed to make room for a propensity which, although obviously existing as a radical, primitive, irreducible emotion, has been equally overlooked by all the religious advisors and ethics counsellors who have preceded such psychologists. In our pure intoxication with science, we have indeed all overlooked it. Even so-called intellectuals have suffered its existence to escape their senses, solely through want of belief -- of faith; -- whether it be faith in God-imparted revelations, or faith in the seemingly magical properties of Quantum theory or String cosmology. The idea of this propensity has never occurred to us, simply because of what it demands of us to confront. We saw no need to account for something apparently outright extraneous. We could not understand, that is to say, we could not have understood, had the notion of this basic movement within ever imposed itself; -- we could not have understood in what manner it might be made to further the technological advancement of greater society or its individual citizens, either immediately or at some distant, space-colonized future.

It cannot be denied that the popular views of the human mind and, in great measure, all transcendental mumbo-jumbo about the human soul has been concocted by means of arm-chair speculation. The intellectual or logical person, as contrasted with the understanding or observant one, set himself to imagine essential designs -- as if to dictate purposes to God Almighty. Having thus fathomed, to his satisfaction, the intentions of Deity Itself, out of these intentions the arm-chair speculator built innumerable systems about what is this thing called Mind. In the matter of common sense thinking, for example, we first determined, naturally enough, that it was the design of God that humans should eat. We then assigned to every human a neural structure, or brain module, perhaps; and this tiny, electro-chemical sub-section of neurons becomes the scourge with which God compels humans, whether dieting or not, into eating. Secondly, having settled it to be God's will that humans should continue the species, we discovered all sorts of brain structures consistent with our expectations.

And so as with equally aggressive ideals about how the mind works,--so too, in short, with any other pet psychological theory about ethics or creativity we happen to come up with. And in these arrangements of some Grand Theory of human action, psychologists, whether right or wrong, in part, or upon the whole, have but followed, in principle, the footsteps of their predecessors: deducing and establishing every thing from their preconceived notions of humanity, and upon the ground of the objects of God, if they are pious; or of the more mysterious fathoms of physics theories, if they are not.

It would have been wiser, it would have been safer, to classify (if classify we must) upon the basis of what humans usually or occasionally did, and was always occasionally doing, rather than upon the basis of what we took it for granted God intended them to do. If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in God's inconceivable thoughts by which God put all of reality together? If we cannot understand God by studying the concrete examples of biological creatures, how then in God's metaphysical relations which were brought to bear in designing it all?

Induction -- that is, straight-forward observation should have brought popular psychology to admit, as an innate and primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical something, which we may call perverseness, for want of a more nuanced, scientific term. In the sense I intend, it is, in fact, an instinctive drive with no accompanying evolutionary goal. Through its promptings we act without comprehensible object; or, if this shall be understood as a biological contradiction in terms, we may so far modify the claim as to say, that through its promptings we act, for the reason that we should not.

In theory, no reason can be more unreasonable, but, in fact, there is none more strong. With certain minds, under certain conditions, it becomes absolutely irresistible. I am not more certain that I breathe, than that the assurance of the wrong or error of any action is often the one unconquerable force which impels us, and alone impels us to irresistible action. Nor will this overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrong's sake, admit of philosophical analysis, or scientific resolution into ulterior elements. It is a radical, a primitive impulse-elementary part of human nature.

It will be said, I am aware, that when we persist in acts because we feel we should not persist in them, our conduct is but a modification of that which ordinarily springs from the defensiveness of popular views of the mind. But a glance will show the error of this idea. The defensiveness of what we might dub, 'folk psychology' has for its essence, the necessity of rationalizing our own behaviors. It is our safeguard against injury to our self-concept. Its principle regards our psychological well-being; and thus the desire to be well is coordinated simultaneously with its development. It follows, that the desire to be well-adjusted individuals must be balanced simultaneously with any principle which shall be merely a modification of animal-like aggression toward others, but in the case of that something which I term 'perverseness', the desire to be well-adjusted individuals is not only not aroused, but a strongly antagonistical sentiment, a primitive self-destructive combative emotional disposition exists in every human being, everywhere.

An appeal to one's own heart is, after all, the best reply to the kind of deceptive, folk-psychology bullshit in currency today. No one who trustingly consults and thoroughly questions his own inner-self, will be disposed to deny the entire radicalness of the propensity in question. It is a more obvious truth about human nature even than it is paradoxical fact about the mind. There lives no person who at some period has not been tormented, for example, by an earnest desire to tantalize a listener by subtly evasive talk. The speaker is aware that he displeases; still, he has every intention to please, such a person might usually be curt, precise, and clear, the most concise and illuminating language is struggling for utterance upon his tongue, it is only with difficulty that he restrains himself from giving it flow; he dreads and deprecates the anger of him whom he addresses; yet, the thought strikes the speaker, that by certain intricacies and complexities and by little additions now and then this anger of the listener may be carefully stocked. That tiny seed of a thought toward evasiveness in the speaker is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and embarrassment of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences) is then indulged.

Or again, suppose we have a task before us which is of some urgency to be performed. We know that it will be ruinous to make delay. Maybe even the most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole mind is begging to take on the task. It must, it shall be undertaken today, and yet we put it off until tomorrow, and why? There is no answer, except that we feel perverse, obstinately persisting in the error of our own fault; wrongly self-willed or stubborn, and without our even being aware of it. Tomorrow arrives, and with it a more impatient anxiety to do that to which we've committed ourselves so strongly, but with this very increase of anxiety arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable, craving for delay. This craving gathers strength as the moments tick by. The last hour for action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of the conflict within us, -- of the definite with the indefinite -- of the substance with the shadow. But, if the wrestling with ourselves proceeded thus far, it is the shadow which prevails, -- we struggle in vain. The clock strikes, and is an ominous sound for our happiness. At the same time, this odd and irrational delay on our part is a funeral song, somber notes to the ghost that has so long overawed us. But then it suddenly flies away at the last possible second -- it disappears -- we are free. The old energy returns. We will labor now surely! Alas, by that time it is however, by far, too late for action!

We now stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss -- we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling. By gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor from the bottle out of which arose the genie in the Arabian Nights. But out of this our cloud upon the precipice's edge, there grows into palpability, a shape, far more terrible than any genie or any demon of a fairy-tale, and yet it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one which electrifies the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. It is equal to the idea of what would be our sensations during the first few seconds of a fall from a great height. And this fall -- this rushing annihilation- for the very reason that it involves that one most despicable and loathsome of all the most despicable and loathsome images of death and torture which have ever presented themselves to our imagination -- for this horrid, contemplated act do we now most vividly desire, we both loathe it and yet lust for it. And because our reason violently claws us away from this brink, therefore we want it all the more so. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of a person who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a jump to his own doom. To indulge, just for a moment, in any attempt at the thought, is to be inevitably lost; for even a tiny bit of reflection would urge us to halt such an insane commitment to act, and therefore it is, I claim, that we cannot halt it. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to drag ourselves backward from the abyss, we will plunge, and be destroyed by our own now fragmented will.

Examine these similar actions as much as we will; nevertheless, we shall find them resulting solely from the spirit of the perverse. We perpetrate them because we feel that we should not. Beyond or behind this there is no reasoned motivation nor rational goal; and we might, indeed, deem this perverseness a direct instigation of some unholy, medieval demon, were it not occasionally for the blind luck of random chance allowing people to occasionally live through such horrid acts.

I have brought up this whole issue, that in some measure I may answer your question, that I may explain to you why I am here as I am now, that I may assign to you something that shall have at least the faint aspect of a cause for my wearing these orange coveralls, and for my tenanting this cell on death row. Had I not been so careful to expand on the issue, you might either have misunderstood me altogether, or, like other slack-jawed ignoramuses, have fancied me insane. As it is, you will easily perceive that I am one of the many uncounted victims of this perversity, this Seed of Evil found in every human being.

It is impossible that any one's deed could have been wrought with a more thorough deliberation. For weeks, for months, I pondered upon the means of the murder. I rejected a thousand schemes, because their accomplishment involved a chance of detection. At length, in reading some french memoirs, I found an account of a nearly fatal illness that occurred to Madame Pilau, through the agency of a scented candle accidentally poisoned. The idea struck my fancy at once. I knew my victim's habit of reading in bed. I knew, too, that his apartment was narrow and ill-ventilated. But I need not irritate you with impertinent details. I need not describe the easy artifices by which I substituted, in his bed-room night-stand, a cotton wick of my own making for the one which I there found. The next morning he was discovered dead in his bed, and The Coroner's verdict was -- "Death by accidental aerosol poisoning."

Having inherited his estate, all went well with me for years. The idea of detection never once entered my brain. Of the remains of the fatal wick I had myself carefully disposed. I had left no shadow of a clue by which it would be possible to convict, or even to suspect me of the crime. It is inconceivable how rich a feeling of satisfaction arose in my heart as I reflected upon my absolute security from detection. For a very long period of time I was accustomed to revel in this feeling. It afforded me more real delight than all the mere financial advantages accruing from my dastardly deed. But there arrived at length a barely discernible moment, from which the pleasurable feeling grew, by scarcely perceptible gradations, into a haunting and harassing thought. It harassed because it haunted. I could scarcely get rid of it for an instant. It is quite a common thing to be thus annoyed with the recurrence in our ears, or rather in our memories, of the burden of some ordinary song, or some unimpressive snatches from an advertisement repeated ad nauseam on the radio or TV. Nor will we be the less tormented if the song in itself happens to be good, or the music's style to be our preferred. In this manner, at last, I would perpetually catch myself pondering upon my security from detection, and repeating, in a low undertone, the phrase, "I am safe."

One day, while sauntering around a mall, I caught myself up short in the act of murmuring, half aloud, certain customary words. But in a fit of irritability, I now said them thus; "I am safe -- I am safe- yes -- if I'm not fool enough to make open confession!"

No sooner had I spoken these words, than I felt an electric chill creep toward my heart. I had had some experience in these fits of perversity, (whose nature I earlier took some trouble to explain), and I remembered well that in no instance had I ever successfully resisted their attacks. And now my own casual self-suggestion that I might possibly be fool enough to confess the murder of which I had been guilty, confronted me, as if it were the very ghost of him whom I had murdered -- and beckoned me on to death.

At first, I made an effort to shake off these nightmarish thoughts. I walked vigorously -- faster -- still faster -- at length I ran. I felt a maddening desire to shriek aloud. Every succeeding wave of thought overwhelmed me with new terror, for, alas! I well, too well understood that merely to think such, in my situation, was to be lost. I still more quickened my pace. I bounded like a madman through the crowded stores, stumbling down escalators, racing through the expansive mall-ways. At length, people took alarm, and security took pursuit. I felt then the consummation of my fate. If I could have torn out my tongue, I would have done it, but a rough voice resounded in my ears -- a rougher grasp seized me by the shoulder. I turned -- I gasped for breath. For a moment I experienced all the pangs of suffocation; I became blind, and deaf, and giddy; and then some invisible fiend, I thought, struck me with his broad palm upon the back. The long imprisoned secret burst forth from some deepest, hidden part of my mind.

They say that I spoke with a distinct enunciation, but with marked emphasis and passionate hurry, as if in dread of interruption before concluding the brief, but pregnant sentences that consigned me to the injection chamber and to hell.

Having related all that was necessary for the fullest judicial conviction, I collapsed into blackness.

But why shall I say more? Today I wear this orange, and sit alone in a steel and concrete cell, and am here! Tomorrow I shall be cell-less! -- but where?

The End



REFERENCES

[ * ] Poe's original (p. 1845/46) story can be found here:

Edgar Allan Poe "The Imp of the Perverse" Classic Literature About.com (Accessed July 7, 2009)

[ * ] I was motivated to do an updated translation of Poe's essay by an article I recently read in The New York times:

Benedict Carey "Why the Imp in Your Brain Gets Out" New York Times July 6, 2009.

[ * ] Mr. Carey's story relies on the following recently published scientific paper:

Daniel M. Wegner, "How to Think, Say, or Do Precisely the Worst Thing for Any Occasion" Science 3 July 3 2009:Vol. 325. no. 5936, pp. 48 - 50. DOI: 10.1126/science.1167346

[ * ] If you enjoyed this paraphrase, and can think other Victorian Era English essays which might be effectively translated into 21st century concepts, I hope you'll take the time to link them by means of your comments. -- B.A.M.

O.

Google Trends: Religion, Physics, and Philosophy

The clear correlation among these terms makes one wonder how these concepts are related in the public's mind. It certainly appears they are conceptually linked to one another.

O.

REFERENCES

[image] Google Trends

[ * ] In case you're wondering, "Google Trends shows how often a particular search term is entered relative the total search volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages. The horizontal axis of the main graph represents time (starting from some time in 2004), and the vertical is how often a term is searched for relative to the total number of searches, globally." [from wikipedia]

Epistemology joke

This is probably an old joke, but it does get to the heart of many kinds of debates in perception and (alleged) knowledge by induction.

An engineer, an experimental physicist, a theoretical physicist, and a philosopher were hiking together through the hills of Scotland. They reached a hilltop. Looking over to the next hilltop, they saw a black sheep.

In delight, the engineer cried, “What do you know? The sheep in Scotland are black!”

“Well, some of the sheep in Scotland are black,” replied the experimental physicist.

The theoretical physicist considered this a minute, then said, “Well, at least one of the sheep in Scotland is black.”

The philosopher thought for a second, then responded, “Well, it’s black on one side, anyway.”

The allusion here is to a well-known 1976 article by Alvin Goldman, which among other things warns against us allowing lucky circumstances into our concept of knowledge. One part of that article is well-summarized in an entry titled "Defeaters in Epistemology" in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Suppose Henry is driving through a Wisconsin town, admiring the scenery. He sees a barn and believes “there’s a barn.” Unbeknownst to Henry, this Wisconsin town is full of papier-mâché barn facsimiles, which look like real barns when viewed from the road. However, the structure Henry happens to look at is a genuine barn. He just happens to glance in the direction where one of the few real barns is located. His belief is true since he’s looking at a genuine barn. He also appears justified in holding this belief. Henry believes what seems to him to be the case. He has no reason to believe that anything is suspicious about his perceptions, much less that he’s in a town mostly populated with fake barns. He also knows that barns are fairly common in this part of the state. Nonetheless, it seems that, however justified Henry may be in holding this belief, he doesn’t know that there is a barn present. He is of course lucky to believe what is true in this circumstance, but it’s precisely this feature of the situation that raises doubt about whether he knows there is a barn before him. Had he looked at any other time, his eyes would have landed on a fake barn and his resultant belief would have been false. Knowledge would seem to require that it not be a matter of epistemic serendipity that one’s belief is true.

Ah, such is the life of philosophy, that even its jokes require analysis. But that's a good thing!

O.

REFERENCES

[image] Slow Leadership Website (Accessed 4/30/2009)

Compassion and Emptiness

"Listen," She said, as if resigned that I wouldn't get it, "Listen. There are many universes, of which we inhabit only one. But in each universe, the goal of Being, the goal of capital 'B'-Being is compassion. That's it, pure and simple. It's the fundamental, spiritual orientation of things.

"When you look out even into this universe, there are 100, maybe 200 billion stars in just our galaxy alone, but it's just emptiness between this and yet another star-filled galaxy. The insight into emptiness is enshrined right out there, in the very structure of the universe itself. Just emptiness. Plain emptiness. That's all there is to real wisdom. Acting with compassion, and recognizing emptiness. Nothing else. No metaphysics, no deep doctrines, all logically connected into some semantic super-structure. Just those two things: compassion and emptiness."

I looked at the woman beside her, thinking she might have some comment to kick-in. She didn't. Until now, she hadn't spoken the whole time.

"Who's that?" I asked.

"She's best thought of as my sister," the woman began, "though that's about all you could make sense of. The real truth is worrisome, is complicated--." She trailed off. The talking had stopped now, and she was staring ahead, seemingly not waiting for anything, much less a reply from me.

"So, why are you two here today? I mean -- do you regularly pray at this time or what?" I was trying to keep the conversation going. This lady seemed interesting, different than I'd expected. "And your, uh, sister comes regularly with you, I take it?"

"It's not that she's regularly with me, it's that she never leaves."

"Okay," I slowly said, drawing it out. I found myself thinking I was standing a bit closer to this woman than I probably should be.

"If I move, she moves. If I'm still, she is still. when I am meditating, it should be on her. So in meditating or acting, she should be my focus. She has come to teach me compassion."

The pseudo-sister, or whatever she was, didn't seem bothered by our talking about her, she just smiled, perhaps as if thinking of some happy but insignificant moment in her private past.

"Some time ago, she presented herself, and without any words I knew what her role was -- that when I died, she would also die. I had no reason to live, I was alone. I didn't have things badly, but I was just in the habit of rising each day because I was in the habit of eating, and tilling my garden, and then of going to sleep, and of living my regular life -- again, by pure repetition without exception. I had no reason for being, nor did I chose to 'be', I just 'was', going on day after day thru the same kind of life."

She watched me. Perhaps she was assessing me, evaluating whether it was worth going on. Well, that's how I took it, anyway. So I tried to relax. And I tried to simply show that I was giving her my attention, all of it. It's rare to pay attention to somebody, and not just for later evaluation, or just for a break to get some words back in as soon as possible. Or just to summarize what somebody else has said in order to satisfying them that you really did listen. So I simply gave her my attention. That was enough. She went on.

"Now I live out of compassion -- compassion for her. My life may or may not be worth anything. But how can I say of her, that her life isn't worth anything? My life is worth at least hers, that much I'll say. So I take care of myself. And not because I seek a long life, but because I seek her long life, and my life is now her life. Before she presented herself, I had emptiness but no compassion. But now I have both emptiness and compassion. This is the sole meaning a person will find in this universe."

The women stayed-on a bit longer at the temple, but eventually a smile and a silent nod indicated that they would both be taking their leave. And soon enough, both emptiness and compassion were again found outside the temple.

O.

REFERENCES

[image] focajonathan "Women praying in front of the Jokang temple" Flickr Oct. 8 2006 (Accessed 12/22/2008)

Vegitarianism?

This picture got me thinking a bit about vegetarianism. Some claim there are as many as 20 million vegetarians in the US,[1] though I've seen numbers of about 5-7 million being more widely quoted. Either way, that's a lot of people, but still a fairly small number when given the whole population of the country. One of the most enjoyable (and competent) articles I've read against committing to a vegetarian lifestyle (as the most reasonable life-choice) is by Craig Fitzroy, titled "The Great Fallacies of Vegetarianism." Perhaps I should cite an enjoyable and competent article for vegetarianism, but I can't say I've ever run across one.


REFERENCES

[image] www.saynotocrack.com

[1] This 20 million stat is apparently from the San Francisco Vegetarian Society.

O.

A Few Basic Epistemology Thoughts

Just a few thoughts on Epistemology, mostly uttered as a way of testing my ability to post Quicktime videos.

O.

Life, meaning, and the cockroach

In my mind's eye, I have imagined a cockroach – but, interestingly enough, a dead cockroach. Is there really any difference between us and the cockroach? Of course, one argues, there are a host of differences that come immediately to mind! Consider all the important essentials that mark humans from all other mammals, much less from this loathsome insect. “We are as gods when compared to the cockroach!” a traditionalist might proclaim.

Yet are we so distinct from the cockroach, from any insect really, to require such transcendental comparisons? I think not. There's reason to be humbled:

Humans possess 100,000,000,000 brain cells. A cockroach has nearly 1,000,000 brain cells; a fruit fly, only 250,000. Still, insects exercise impressive information management: They pack neurons into their brains 10 times more densely than mammals do. They also use each brain cell more flexibly than mammals. Several far-flung tendrils of a single neuron can each act independently—boosting computing power without increasing the number of cells. Somehow that circuitry allows a honeybee, with barely a million neurons on board, to meander six miles from its hive, find food, and make a beeline directly home. Few humans could do the same even with a map and a compass.[1]

And there's the host of biological similarities, left-over insults stemming from our species common descent with modification from the cockroach 500 million years ago or so.

Decades ago, as a teenager, my brother and I were helping my father completely remodel a dilapidated house. A bit too casually we chained the base of the semi-rotting front porch to the hitch of a working man's, no nonsense white pick-up truck. When, slowly, the wooden structure stripped away with all the dignity of a crusted scab being peeled from the face of a room temperature corpse, what jittery army crawled from the now gaping mouth below front door and foundation was a site to behold. Hundreds of brownish-red, Jelly Belly-sized eggs tumbled about while thousands, maybe even millions of shiny, brown-shell shielded cockroaches jiggled about chaotically, pouring out of every nook, slot, and concrete cranny of the house and porch. To the delighted disgust of our boyish curiosity, dotted here and there among the brown shimmering mass were even a few white specimens – albino cockroaches, or so we thought – appearing as some priestly class of cockroach, somehow specially separated, holy exceptions to their otherwise more unclean, tainted-colored brethren.

Moving a shovel above them to get in a good smash was difficult. And that day certainly marked the record for me being perceived by more minds at one time than at any since. Each 18-jointed insect, madly trying to escape to anywhere but there, was training no less than 4,000 individual lenses upon its monstrous primate invaders.[2] Even their rear-ends sported finely-tuned perceptors, motion detectors which allow them to determine the most efficient escape trajectory.[3]

Cockroaches don't live that long, two-and-a-half years at most.[4] So my brother and I have been long forgotten by our zillion viewers. But while alive cockroaches learn from experience and draw from memory just as do higher mammals, Japanese researchers assure us:

Cockroaches have a memory and can be taught to salivate in response to neutral stimuli in the way that Pavlov's dogs would do when the famed Russian doctor rang his bell [....] Such "conditioning" can only take place when there is memory and learning, and this salivating response had only previously been proven in humans and dogs. Now, cockroaches appear to have that aptitude too.[5]

In a world of brains, numbers of neurons count for something, even if not everything. I think I saw more than one hundred thousand cockroaches that day. So the amount of neural mass controlling all those cockroaches was heaver than the neural mass inside my head. I have heard estimates that there are six trillion cockroaches on the planet, but I think that's probably too small. There are only about six billion people, so for each person, there would be such an unfair allotment of but one-thousand cockroaches for each. Could I have gotten so lucky that day to have seen so many? I doubt it. “Scientists estimate that there are one quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) ants living on the earth at any given time,”[6] so I'm guessing cockroaches are at least right up there in such large numbers.

The cockroach -- so many of them; so few of us. Perhaps the law of supply and demand establish our value to nature. There are far fewer people, far more cockroaches. So we are worth more, rare beings that we are. The Baji River dolphin and friends would surely agree with such an assessment.


REFERENCES

[image] “The Gokiburi Wars” Kyonoki June 21, 2007 (Acessed August 14, 2008)

[1] “Consciousness in a Cockroach” Discover January 10, 2007. (Accessed August 14, 2008)

[2] “The cockroach & amazing facts” Essortment (Accessed August 14, 2008)

[3] “Roach Anatomy: The Inside Story” Wendell's Yucky Bug World (Accessed August 14, 2008)

[4] “Cockroaches and Their Control” College of Agriculture and Home Economics, New Mexico State University. July 1998 (Accessed August, 14, 2008)

[5] Tan Ee Lyn “Cockroaches can learn -- like dogs and humans” Reuters June 13, 2007 (Accessed August 14, 2008)

[6] “Number of Ants in the World“ They Physics Fact Book (Accessed August 14, 2008)

Property, microprocessors, and the future of ownership

When GPS- enabled microprocessors are as pervasive as paper and just as cheap, what then?

What is 'property'? I got stuff; you got stuff. But which stuff is mine and which is not mine? At work I have two or three staplers. They have sat in my office, being punched now and then, for about 14 years. But I don't consider them mine; they are the school's property. I'm moving the pointer around on this MacBook by means of (ironically) a USB Microsoft mouse. I bought it just yesterday at Walmart, yet it's not Walmart's property -- it's my property. If one night I caught the school president, red-handed, sneaking out of my office carting away my staplers and school envelopes within a burlap bag, I'd call him a jerk. But if I caught him likewise carting off my books and coffee maker, I'd call the cops.

The above thought experiments get at some of our intuitions on the matter, but do not identify all the types of property. Typically, property is classified in three genera: land, items of a personal kind, and (the ever-nebulous category of) intellectual property. Here we will be concerned only with personal property.

1. Property and 'rights'

In biology, 'genera' is a taxonomic category consisting of a group of species exhibiting similar characteristics. So too, all the different genera of property seem to share something concerning rights. Certain rights are accorded to the owner of the property. Once explicitly stated, property rights are pretty much in accord with our common sense: (1) The owner gets to use or control the property. (2) The owner gets to buy or sell the property as s/he sees fit. (3) The owner gets to keep others from using it. And, most importantly, (4) the owner gets to collect benefits from the property.

Consider an example to bring out some of the implications of these property rights. Suppose I go to the store and buy a can of Campbell's mushroom soup. Along with some greasy German sausage and my propane BBQ grill, I pack-up my soup and head-out to a much over-grown campsite in a state park for a nite's stay. Now, Douglas R. Conant, President and Chief Executive Officer of Campbell Soup Company, happens to be in the camp site next to me. He curiously watches as I pull out a couple of sturdy wool socks and double-cover the soup can. At this point, I begin to wildly swing the can-n-sock apparatus around, knocking flat all the overgrown switch grass and cat tails. I then remove the soup can, open it, and begin trying to shake the gelatinous, mushroom soup contents out, so as to use the can as a grease trap for my BBQ grill. (Fortunately a hungry, but well-financed, boy comes along with an empty styrofoam soda cup, and I sell him the contents for a handsome profit of five bucks.) Finally, I then peel off the label, and, with the help of a magnifying glass, use it to start the grill's fire. Mr. Conant has had enough. He runs over. "Excuse me," he says, "I happen to know a bit about Campbell's soup products, and these shenanigans of yours are definitely not what the company had in mind for that particular item." Admittedly, he lectures me with some authority on the matter.

How might I answer him in light of my property rights? Quite straightforwardly, I may say that, as the owner, I get to use the can of mushroom soup anyway I please. If I want to sell its contents at a profit, then so be it; or, I could have kept the soup for myself and dumped it on the ground. It's my decision as the legal owner. Furthermore, not only was part of its contents to my advantage financially, but the tin can is highly temperature resistant, so as to be adapted to my ends. Thus, again as the rightful owner, I may enjoy both benefits.

However, sometimes property rights are not as straightforward as the above example makes them appear. I happen to own a house in Oklahoma oil country. I bought the land, and some kind man took my money and built me a house upon it. Also, there is a well on the land, which means I can draw water from the ground. But I can't draw just anything from the ground. Owning the property gives me the right to the water, but I don't have what's called 'mineral rights' -- which is "the ownership of minerals (coal, oil, gas, etc.) under a given surface and the legal right to enter that area and mine and remove them." Ownership of mineral rights also "includes the right to use as much of the land surface as may be reasonably necessary for the conduct of mining operations."[Calf] This means that Mr. Golden Driller and his heinously dusty trucks could make dirt-scar roads into my backyard so as to access one of his many oil derricks. Admittedly, an eye sore, but too bad for me.

2. Property and 'ownership'

2.1. Just what is owned?

One way of seeing the situation is that maybe Mr. Driller and I are not co-owners of the same piece of property; instead, we own two separate properties, but as a practical matter they are (inconveniently) inter-twined. But another way of seeing the situation is that I own one set of attributes of the property, while Mr. Driller owns another set of attributes of the same property. Which is right? Imagine two minor deities proclaiming their respective areas of authority. One says, "I am the god of circles!" The other says, "I am the god of triangles!" A troublesome worshiper comes along and asks, "Uh, who's the god of cones?" In philosophy, arguments like this fall under a topic called 'material constitution'

I predict that the continued (and eventually complete) penetration of microprocessors into the mundane objects of the world will exacerbate issues like those seen in the mineral rights case. Before showing this, there is related issue about property which must be addressed.

2.2. Tracking what is owned

Last week, Intel introduced the first products of a new generation of system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs that will target markets in

"consumer electronics, mobile Internet devices, and embedded systems. Currently, these new products each contain four chips -- a CPU core, memory controller, input/output controller, and acceleration technology -- integrated into one system. Intel claims the SoCs are 45% smaller and uses 34% less power than other Intel chips with similar capabilities."[InfoWeek]

One of the declared uses for SoCs is telephony and wireless infrastructure. The full version of SoCs will hit when there is mass production of Atom, which is "one of Intel's latest 45-nanometer-scale manufactured processors. The low-power chip available with one or two cores is expected to have a clock speed ranging from 800 MHz to 1.87 GHz and is aimed at ultramobile PCs, smartphones, mobile Internet devices, and other portable and low-power applications." Later, even graphics processing will be added to the die. In the longer run, Intel is banking on what many futurists have been predicting for years -- that there will be "an emerging market that will someday encompass billions of next-generation Internet-connected devices, ranging from handheld computers in people's pockets to home health-monitoring devices sending patient data to doctors in a medical center."[InfoWeek]

Actually, the idea of billions of devices understates things, since any given item that can be given a barcode could just as well be given a full system-on-a-chip, if the price of such systems were as cost effective as barcodes -- that is to say, if such systems were as cheap as paper. A single sheet of paper costs about one-half cent, and many minimum-sized barcodes can fit on a single sheet of paper; thus, the area of a sheet of paper divided by the minimum barcode size gives a pretty good approximation of the significant raw materials cost of affixing a barcode on a label. I am unclear how many barcodes are actually present on currently marketed products, but I do know that over 330 billion barcoded manufacturer paper coupons are issued in the US annually.[Barcode]

And it is an accepted truism that computing hardware gets smaller at a known rate, and that processing power also advances at a known rate. But the interaction between computers is now being seen as also of importance. 'Cloud computing', seen as a common pool, becomes more powerful when additional processors are added as resources. As whole systems become cheaper and more ubiquitous, the costs of storing and processing data become all the more cheaper. For now, wireless devices do not lend their unused cycles to The Cloud, but eventually this would seem to be in the interests of everyone. The reason this does not happen is probably based on risk assessment: there's a worry about privacy, spam, and firewall mischief. But such risk might not matter when there are so many devices with computing power that no single one stands out as worthy of cyber-attack. Books used to be chained to iron bars because they were so rare and valuable. Now, they are freely available to the public in libraries, and loaned out to the most shady commoners. Soon enough, wireless computing resources will find a similar nonchalant role in everyday life.

Eventually a can of mushroom soup can report its date to the refrigerator, which might be a grocery-monitoring clearing house for when things have spoiled, sat on the shelf unused for months (or years), and for how money is spent on what food consumption. Indeed, virtually every piece of property will be in wireless dialogue with many other pieces of property. The exact state and location of each duly and continually reported. All of this has been noted before by observers of technology.

Such a world of self-reporting property brings up many questions. So akin to the question of land rights and mineral rights is another: Are there wireless rights?

3. Wireless property rights

In some ways, issues of privacy are really just another way of thinking about property. A person wants the ability to control what information s/he reveals about him or herself in the public space, whether it be print, media, or Internet. Ultimately, a person wants to control access to information, albeit of a personal variety in the case of privacy. Thus, information can be productively thought of as a kind of personal property.

Some kinds of property are shared in common. For example, clean air is a good which is desirable for everyone; it is shared, and offers benefits to the community. Sometimes, however, what is desirable for one set of people is not desirable for another set. Suppose after his camping trip, Mr. Conant realizes he's been quite shaken by my strange usage of his product, and decides to propose a most peculiar agenda item at the next meeting of the Grocery Manufactures Association (GMA). The association will equip a fleet of trucks with wireless routers and surveyors, and drive through my neighborhood to see what other sort of GMA associated products I have sitting on my shelves. (Remember, this is the future where microprocessors in products are now as cheap and ubiquitous as bar codes.) It might be quite desirable and useful for the GMA to see what sorts of products are in my possession, and also for how long I've had them. But this is information I do not want them to have about me.

The GMA might argue that such information, like air, is free to all. Just as one steps out on a cold morning and breaths in an open lung-full of air; so too, they are merely taking advantage of the open spectrum of detection. After all, they might further argue, the Brick Industry Association (BIA) recently drove through the neighborhood and took pictures of all the houses, and then ran these photos through an advanced color spectrum scanner. The BIA company then determined what the most popular preferences were for bricks. And no one charged them with invasion of privacy, since they kept on public streets and acquired information which was accessible from a public area. We are doing the same thing, the GMA concludes, but instead of using light spectrum, we are using radio frequency spectrum to determine popular grocery preferences.

Here the allusion to mineral rights becomes straightforward. Once again, owning the property gives me the right to use and store things as I will upon it (or within it), but perhaps I don't have 'information rights' -- which, perhaps, is the ownership of radio spectrum within a given area and the legal right to exclude that spectrum to common use.

Like mineral rights, ownership of information rights could perhaps be bought by others, or simply not excluded to others, so that they have the right to inventory spectrum-emitting devices in ways that are reasonably necessary for the conduct of information gathering for commercial reconnaissance. Thus, the GMA and their modified router campers could cruise up and down my street all day long so as to record the inventory reporting of my products.

Again, Mr. Conant, as a member of the GMA, and I, as a private purchaser, are not co-owners of the same piece of property -- say, a soup can; instead, we own two separate properties, but as a practical matter, they are (inconveniently for my privacy, at least) inter-twined. Or, maybe the soup can is a single item, but I own one set of attributes (i.e., its contents, container, and function for use), while GMA members, among others, could buy another set of attributes (i.e., its reporting information) of the same property.

4. Conclusion

When GPS-enabled microprocessors are as pervasive as paper and just as cheap, I think a second round of discussion of property rights will be forced upon us. The questions unfold in ways parallel to the common sense notions of property outlined earlier: (1) Will the wireless information associated with the property of an owner be controlled or used solely by that owner? (2) Will the owner get to buy or sell that information as s/he sees fit? (3) Shall that owner get to keep others from using that information? And, finally, (4) Does the owner alone get to collect benefits from the information associated with property?

Just as the patent office wrestles with the subtleties of what abstract structures can and cannot be patented -- e.g., formulas cannot, software can; likewise, what counts as common goods, public goods, and private goods will also force society to delineate what kinds of abstractions can be controlled by individuals, corporation, and government.

REFERENCES

[image] CMEA Ventures

[infoWeek] Antone Gonsalves "Intel Revamps Its System-On-Chip Design" Information Week July 24, 2008 (Accessed July 24, 2008).

[calf] "Mineral Rights" Glossary The California Forest Products Commission (Accessed July 24, 2008)

[Barcode] "Coupons" GS1 US Barcodes and eCom - The Global Language of Business (Accessed August 8, 2008)



O.

Wittgenstein, Aliens, and Yip Yips

{ Podcast this essay } This Yip Yips meet the telephone video brings up many issues in philosophy of language. Were even the most friendly aliens to make an initial landing on Earth, things would not go well for them in understanding human ways. Of course, this is contrary to every Hollywood movie one sees on the subject.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, the most famous 20th-century philosopher, once said that "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him."[2] This is probably overstated, since mammalian threat sounds are understood widely; hence, growling, hissing, etc. are all commonly taken as non-neutral encounters among differing mammal species.

But Wittgenstein's quip would not be overstated if there were a radically different evolutionary heritage at work. I was in Boston, recently, and was finally able to observe live jellyfish up-close. How could one possibly tell what mood they are in? Is it even sensible to say jellyfish have moods? It seems not, at least given how we attribute that mental state to one another, and possibly to other animals with relatively large brains.

Whether sporting a "brain" or not, on the assumptions that aliens built spaceships and landed on Earth, they would necessarily have some sort of physical structure which allows them the ability to process information to guide action. But the way they perceive the world and parse objects could be so radically different from ours that even the simplest interaction with our most basic technologies would bamboozle them. Indeed, by observing objects in the world, it might be unclear to them just what things are alive and what things are not. There are many natural kinds of objects in our world that seem alive, yet aren't. [3]

And certainly there are a host of artificial kinds of objects in our world with very complex behaviors which appear alive. Such robots and computer-driven toys are ubiquitous. Some years ago, I obtained a wind-up, Bug's Life, Rosie the spider toy from a McDonald's Happy Meal. For minor pedagogical thrills, I occasionally let it plod across my desk. "Why is this not considered alive? Or sentient?" I ask students with feigned puzzlement. The answers do not come readily, even to intelligent people wanting to give a defensible answer.

Many of the kinds of unstated assumptions that we naturally make about pragmatical issues in language are brought to the fore by the Yip Yip encounter with the old school telephone. Here is something known by adults to be a nonliving, inanimate object, but Yip Yips approach it as if it were a sentient, living creature. Perhaps in Yip Yip land -- Apparently they are from Mars -- virtually all shiny black things which sit quietly near windows are alive; so, they make the natural induction that here they've found a likewise living creature dwelling on Earth -- thus the amount of labor they invest in trying to communicate with it.

Yips do seem to share the basic biological response that sudden-impacting sense events are, by default, to be taken as threatening. See how they duck-and-cover beneath their chins as their basic survival pattern.

Notice also that while Yip Yips know books are used for attaining information about things on earth, they don't quite have the context down for use of the word "call". The Yip Yips, of course, are characters on a children's program, a program that has interests in teaching children language and reading skills. The writers must ask the deep questions of what someone who has very little experience and skills in language must think about. Yips are stand-ins for the pre-philosophical puzzlements of very young children. Wittgenstein address these kinds of puzzlements in many ways and in various places within his writing, but here is a particularly relevant quote from him on the subject:

Someone coming into a strange country will sometimes learn the language of the inhabitants from ostensive definitions that they give him; and he will often have to 'guess' the meaning of these definitions; and will guess sometimes right, sometimes wrong.

And now, I think, we can say: Augustine describes the learning of human language as if the child came into a strange country and did not understand the language of the country; that is, as if it already had a language, only not this one. Or again: as if the child could already think, only not yet speak. And "think" would here mean something like "talk to itself".

Suppose, however, someone were to object: "It is not true that you must already be master of a language in order to understand an ostensive definition: all you need --of course!-- is to know or guess what the person giving the explanation is pointing to. That is, whether for example to the shape of the object, or to its colour, or to its number, and so on." -- And what does 'pointing to the shape', 'pointing to the colour' consist in? Point to a piece of paper. --And now point to its shape -- now to its colour -- now to its number (that sounds queer). --How did you do it? --You will say that you 'meant' a different thing each time you pointed. And if I ask how that is done, you will say you concentrated your attention on the colour, the shape, etc. But I ask again: how is that done?[4]

How is it all done, indeed. There is a mysterious air about setting the context for what is "meant" by something. Yet moving from no language to competency in language is regularly seen in the natural development of children, and it is thought that certain rules for learning the rules of language -- call them "second-order" rules -- are somehow encoded into the DNA of all humans. For example, when a parent talks to a child, the child's default glance is not to the adult's feet, but to that moving, sound-emitting hole in the front the adult's head.

Recognizing the oddness of Yip Yips is probably about as close as we adults can get to feeling the conundrums of entering the linguistic world faced by each child as s/he works out, day by day, his or her semantic and pragmatic competency in a native tongue.

REFERENCES

[1] "Yip yips meet the telephone" YouTube (Accessed 7/16/2007)

[2] Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1953/2001). Philosophical Investigations. Blackwell Publishing. p. 190.

[3] Examples of things that might appear to look alive but are not: [rocks 3.1], [crystals 3.2], [electricity 3.3]

[4] Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations section 32 & 33.

O.

Being, non-Being, and the Devil (Mash-up Comics)

Click the above image for full size.

The purpose and character of the use of comix herein is for nonprofit, educational purposes, as subject to limitations found in sections 107 through 118 of the Copyright Act (title 17, U. S. Code). Character likenesses adapted from http://cobb.typepad.com

Referential Opacity (Mash-up Comics)

Click the above image for full size.

The purpose and character of the use of comix herein is for nonprofit, educational purposes, as subject to limitations found in sections 107 through 118 of the Copyright Act (title 17, U. S. Code).