Finish Every Time

Cyril C. House
Mass Communication and Popular Culture
14/02/2016

Finish Every Time

Introduction

  "That's what" (She). Today's generation is vastly freer to assert themselves than ever before, and one of the results of such freedom is the inevitable expression of repressed sexuality. This comes out in many forms, from the more mature expressions seen in the influx of openly-LGBTTIQQ2SA-persons, across the spectrum to the less mature expressions seen in the wry humour of today’s youth, a prime example is seen in the quotation above. These forms of sexual expression are duly noted by the Cultural Production Industry. The Cultural Protection Industry takes this knowledge and wields it as an ammunition of advertisement. In plain cases this means the Sunshine Girl in the Edmonton Sun newspaper, drawing many consumers to purchase the paper for little other reason than to view the Sunshine Girl of the week. There are also more obscure cases, such as the popular Rihanna song Work (DirectLyrics). To a surface listener the lyrics depict a girl who is frustrated with her boyfriend because he is failing to respect her emotions. To a critical ear however, the truth comes out that, this girl is frustrated with her boyfriend but she is frustrated because he is failing to satisfy her sexually. Halfway through the song she meets Drake, and Drake starts rapping about how he intends to fulfill the need that her boyfriend cannot. I am certain you can think of several examples where you have been listening to a song and thought ‘that sounds extremely erotic, I wonder if that is intentional’. Popular Culture is rife with sexuality in advertisements, and even the most seemingly-harmless product-ads carry with them a deeper, darker, sexier side which is intended to appeal to your desire to express yourself sexually. Within this paper I will be taking a peek at one such ad, and pointing out the attributes and components of it which are intended to communicate with the sexuality of the consumer. 

Theoretical Framework

  The study of meaning-making and meaningful communication is known as semiotics. Semiotics was catalyzed by Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist, during his time as an instructor at the University of Paris.  Saussure dies in 1913, two years before the birth of his successor: Roland Barthes. Barthes took the study and application of semiotics and popularized it, writing several books and even publishing a series of essays known as “Mythology of the Month” in the popular magazine Les Lettres Nouvelles (Seiler). 

  Saussure and Barthes studied signs and symbol systems. A language is a type of symbol system, in which the symbols of coloured marks on a page have a systematic meaning, which we call words or sentences. A sign is the cumulative product of a Signifier plus a Signified. When we look at images of kittens, the image of the kitten is the Signifier, it is a physical representation of some-thing. The feelings or thoughts which one has when looking at the image of the kitten, this is the Signified, it is a mental representation of some-thing. A Signifier and Signified, together, comprise a Sign. Two more terms which one should be familiar with to understand the following are: Metaphor and Metonymy. A metaphor is what occurs when there is a disjunction between the signifier and signified, so the signifier Fist can signify Power metaphorically. Not dissimilarly, a metonym is when a signifier represents only part of a larger whole but it is intended to symbolize that whole regardless. Seiler gives the apt example: “the sign of a mother pouring out a particular breakfast cereal for her children is a metonym of all her maternal activities of cooking, cleaning, and so on, but a metaphor for the love and the security she provides.”

Analysis

  When looking at the Duracell ad pictured above a number of things popped into my mind, and after a little unpacking I came to see that there was a logical, linear process of how such thoughts ‘appeared’. As I am sure you are aware, Duracell is a brand of batteries which pride themselves on the ability to ‘keep going, and going, and going’. As it turns out, perhaps not surprisingly, the Duracell brand is the primary signifier here. The ad is for a small, portable power bank to charge your phone with when you are away from an outlet or your charger, but in fact the ad acts to metonymically promote the entire line of battery products, and in fact it better promotes the other battery products than the power bank itself. The second signifier that came to my attention was the heading at the top of the phone display: “Some things shouldn’t end before the end” and I had this shockingly immediate signified representation of a vibrator being powered by some brand of battery less inclined to ‘keep going, and going, and going’, and again as a footing: ‘repower your smartphone with a portable USB charger, and finish every time”; this latter claim has strong implications not just of self-pleasure devices but also of portable pornography which becomes further reinforced by the half-text “Downloaded 99%’. My original assumption was strongly reinforced as I continued to critique this advertisement. A particularly sneaky bit of metaphoric signage in the ad is the dark room just slightly lit by this powered device, again signaling to the consumer a little battery-powered fun in the solitude of darkness.  

  As an individual with a particularly strong ‘conspiracy-radar’ if you will, the second I saw a major corporation advertising with a sluice  of small, nearly unreadable text all positioned in plain sight, my mind was screaming “subliminal messaging!”. The couple points we considered in the previous paragraph were indeed subliminal in the purest sense of the term. This paragraph will be dedicated to the strong signifier/signified which are, not really, all too well hidden. The middle of the phone is riddled with half-finished text messages meant to indicate the dire situations one might find oneself in should one choose not to purchase the Duracell power bank. There are a couple images in the fray as well, most noticeably there is a picture of a box standing in for the word ‘box’ in the half sentence: “Life is like a box of…” In this case the half-sentence is less interesting than the picture itself. The box could be called a metaphor, although I am not sure it is cleverly-enough disguised to warrant such a term because ‘box’ in the street slang of the present-day is an extremely common euphemism for vagina. Some more explicit ‘half-texts’ which will bring sex to the forefront of the mind are “Stick it all the way up his…”, “She’s bleeding from her…”, and “Nobody does it like…”. Now if I, as a common consumer, were to finish these sentences (as I autonomously do), they would read “Stick it all the way up his ass”, “She’s bleeding from her vagina”, and “Nobody does it like you”. Now we have a bit of a disjunction within these three ‘full-texts’, “Stick it all the way up his ass” is explicitly vivid and readily brings forth the signified images of vibrators (in correlation with my argument) and/or other erotic utensils. Skipping ahead to “Nobody does it like you”, this is a much more implicit-implication of sexuality because ‘it’ could be anything, and for many, or perhaps most, people this statement alone would signify myriad other ‘its’ before it signified anything sexual; but taken in correspondence with the rest of the ad’s signifiers, the ‘it’ in this case is arguably a self-pleasure apparatus. If I may recall the example from my introduction about Rihanna’s boyfriend not being able to get her off, and so Drake comes along to assist her; and maybe nobody does do it like Drake, but that is a matter of debate. What is less complex of a discussion topic is the opinion that nobody does it like themselves, bringing us back to the imagery of electronic stimulation devices. Now, the true, seeming, dislocation in our three full-text examples comes with the phrase “She’s bleeding from her vagina”, because there is very little to get excited about when a woman is bleeding in such ways, regardless of the (natural or not) nature of the ailment. However, in a subliminal context there is something to get excited about here, being the word ‘vagina’. Although the phrase in its entirety seems to detract from the erotic ambience of the ad, it is not the entirety in which it is intended to be taken. The word ‘vagina’ is all that the brain is intended to take in because, bleeding or not, any image of a vagina will evoke some semblance of sexuality, and it is this semblance of sexuality which serves the greater purpose of reinforcing the overall message of the ad itself.

Conclusion

  It could be argued that this ad, taken in the context which I have, so vividly, provided is aimed at the typical male-heterosexual-consumer as it is using the signified imagery of masturbating females to promote the Duracell brand, and it does so quite effectively. However, whether intentionally or not, this advertisement is quite effective at targeting the entire consumer spectrum. Hetero-males for the above described reason, hetero-females who desire to finish every time, like Rihanna, and it also appeals to the rest of the population perhaps best captured in the LGBTTIQQ2SA acronym, because of the very plain fact that society attempts to suppress the open expression of sexuality from its subjects, and the natural reaction to such suppression/oppression is to rebel. While the societal controls imposed on obvious forms of sexual rebellion remain in the indoctrinated ‘taboo-range’ of the common citizen, what is not in the taboo-range is buying batteries for any and all battery-powered devices, and when deciding on a brand these people will now choose Duracell; not because they are cognizant of the underlying messages within this ad and intentionally set out to rebel against society, but because their subconscious tells them Duracell is a good brand, because the subconscious recognizes that it feels good to rebel/ it feels good to express oneself sexually/ it feels good to unconsciously experience freedom from sexual oppression, and these good feelings are transmitted to the conscious mind in logical/ non-taboo/ non-offensive messages, something along the lines of: “these batteries have a lot of juice”, “they last longer so I will spend less on batteries”; and these messages are taken in and accepted all while the subconscious mind is screaming in delight. The morality of the advertising tactics examined herein are at best uncertain, but the effectiveness of such techniques is proven. Whether any given person chooses to buy Duracell over the no-name battery brands is meaningless, the important take-away is that Duracell is one of the primary brands of battery which come to mind when asked about batteries, or when thinking about batteries. Duracell’s sales may fluctuate throughout the years, but their notoriety as the brand ‘that doesn’t quit’ will certainly remain a constant.

Works Cited

Rihanna. “Work”. Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group. 18/02/2016. Web. URL = http://www.directlyrics.com/drake-rihanna-work-lyrics.html

Paris, Ogilvy & Mather. “Duracell Batteries: "Some Things Shouldn’t End Before The End" Print Ad”. Coloribus. Web. URL = http://www.coloribus.com/adsarchive/prints/duracell-batteries-some-things-shouldnt-end-before-the-end-15906005/

Seiler, Robert M. “Semiology // Semiotics”. University of Calgary, n.d. 18/02/2016. Web. URL = http://people.ucalgary.ca/~rseiler/semiolog.htm

She. Justin Wishne, Bryan Nicolas. “That’s What She Said: The Most Versatile Joke on Earth”. Penguin Books Ltd: New York, 2011. Print.

A Shabby Chain Indeed

Cyril C. House
History of Political Though
14/02/2016

A Shabby Chain Indeed

  Human society has the potential to achieve liberty when people work together to form a society in which equality means more than negative liberty: the absolute and protected right to run races against each other to determine winners. Idealists imagine a … liberty that enables us to build together toward common objectives that fulfill and even surpass our individual goals. (Macpherson)

This is a very bold statement, and I say such in the most positive tone I can muster. Humans as a race are absolutely bursting with potential, and out of that raw potential has been bred these things known as government and society which are themselves bursting with potential. Some form of societies, however primitive, were necessary constructions, given our biological and psychological construction. But certainly such advanced societies, as are the sprawling urban megalopolises which litter the globe today, were contingent upon the factor to which we chose to utilize our potential more so than otherwise. What exactly is it what I am suggesting when I, in the immortal words of C.B. Macpherson, make such a claim? Well, this will require a few definitions of the working terms before I am able to clearly communicate why it is that “[h]uman society has the potential to achieve liberty when people work together to create a society in which equality means more than negative liberty” (Macpherson).

Negative Liberty

  Negative liberty is best thought of as ‘oppressive freedom’. Isaiah Berlin says “if a man is too poor to afford something on which there is no legal ban – a loaf of bread, a journey round the world, recourse to the law courts – he is as little free to have it as if it were forbidden him by law . . . [his] inability to get given a thing is due to the fact that other human beings have made arrangements whereby [he is], whereas others are not, prevented from having enough money with which to pay for it”. Easily is such a concept viewed in today’s western state: big corporations paying the way in political campaigns (McMahone) in an effort to have their corporate views and desires considered ahead of the rest of the population’s views and desires. For many people this is a concern of motivation. If we consider the corporate donors as the ‘upper class’ we see they measured 3.6% of the population in the United States in 2008 (Lard Bucket). The same area at the same time had 43.4% middle class citizens, whom arguably could have donated to political campaigns, if they chose to, in order to have their views and desires hiked up the totem pole a few degrees. We do not begin to see the utter stratification until we observe the 45.7% of working class citizens, and the 7.3% of lower class citizens (Lard Bucket) in the same time period. By definition, the working and lower classes do not have the spare capital required to, in this case, donate to a political campaign. What one is able to observe about the state of affairs in the above situation is that 53% of the population does not have the required capital to invest in politics, and therefore 53%, a statutory majority, of people are having their views and desires restrained by the actions of the wealthy. This lower 53% of people have the same liberties under their capitalist political system as do the 3.6% whom comprise the upper class; but due to the distribution of wealth this lower 53% is not able to exercise those rights. They have these rights which they are unable to utilize because of the varying consequences of that same set of capitalist rights, such as gross socio-economic stratification throughout the state. What then may we consider an un-utilizable right? Denotatively it is a right all the same, yet connotatively it appears to be a constraint. This is what is meant by negative liberty. The specific example is a token-distinction of negative liberty, and the system which allows such tokens to occur is a type-distinction of negative liberty. I will be concerned with the type-distinction hereforth.

Natural Liberty

  The next type of liberty we ought to examine is natural liberty. Natural liberty is simply the freedom to think and act as one pleases, without the fear of a higher power discovering one’s deeds/thoughts and exacting retribution upon them for experiencing such desires and/or performing such actions. This is the type of liberty experienced before civilized governments came to be, and this is also the type of liberty experienced in an anarchist state. Clearly however, there are some concerns with the practice of natural liberty. If all men have a right to all things, then no man has a right to anything; for I have a right to my life and my body, yet so too does the next man have a right to the same (Hobbes). It was out of such concerns from which the need for positive liberty hails.

(Positive) Liberty

  What then is positive liberty? I think it is put beautifully by the Baron of Montesquieu, Charles Secondat:

[Positive] liberty . . . is a tranquility of the mind arising from the opinion each person has of his safety. In order to have this liberty, it is requisite the government be so constituted as one man need not be afraid of another . . . [It] does not consist in unlimited freedom. We must have continually present to our minds the difference between independence [[natural liberty]] and liberty.

As is phrased above, positive liberty is a regulated and constrained form of natural liberty. It is a freedom to think and act as one pleases, without the fear of a higher power discovering one’s deeds/thoughts and exacting retribution upon them for experiencing such desires and/or performing such actions so long as one’s thoughts and actions do not inhibit the liberties of others to enjoy the same. In order to clarify the distinction I feel the need to point out that by hoarding resources to themselves (money, influence, power) the upper class is indirectly inhibiting the liberties of others to enjoy the same. And not just a few people find themselves within these constraints, as we discussed previously: over half of the population in America are within these constraints to their liberty.

The Difference

  Positive liberty is the most commonly considered type of liberty, and is often mistaken for the only type of liberty, as though there is only Liberty or Not-Liberty; perhaps more accurately as though there are only varying degrees of liberty and the further along the spectrum one observes, the more ‘liberal’ it is. This is not entirely inaccurate, for there does seem to be some sort of a spectrum. The true nature of the spectrum of liberty however, seems to be inversed when compared to its folk-counterpart. Positive liberty inherently contains this restriction that what I do must not interfere with the abilities of others to enjoy the same liberties: everybody is restrained in order to allow everybody to be at equal liberty. Next along the spectrum we find negative liberty, wherein this restraint of all is replaced by a lesser restraint: everybody is kind of restrained in order to allow a minority to experience extreme liberty, while the majority experience a suppression of their liberties. Further yet along the spectrum we find natural liberty, wherein all restraints are removed: everybody is absolutely free to do unto others as they see fit, and so therefore no one is at liberty. If we follow this logic it is plain to see that the more society is restrained from infringing upon one another the freer we all become as a result. It is but a fool’s mathematics which would think that a minority having extreme liberty is of greater a sum than the whole having equal liberty. In dialectic support of my argument, I offer the following quotation: “[a]t Genoa, the word ‘Liberty’ may be read over the front of prisons and on the chains of the galley-slaves. This application of the device is good and just. It is indeed only malefactors of all estates who prevent citizens from being free. In the country in which all men were in the galleys, the most perfect liberty would be enjoyed” (Rousseau 278).

Equality

  Equality is not the right of each to out-run, or out-compete, or out-produce all others. Equality is not as abstract as that. Equality is a concrete state: all persons are equal. Therefore all persons deserve to be treated as equal to one another, and therefore should some persons be suppressing the abilities of others to live their lives to par, then this is not equality. Equality is requiring of a certain, general compassion for the well-being of others. We live in an individualistic, negatively liberal, consumer culture wherein greed is rewarded; but these rewards serve to feed our short-term requirements and desires, and these rewards blind us to the true nature of the societies we live in. If we were to look out beyond the petty wishes of our self-driven-motivations we would see the true potential power of the systems which we comprise. 

Conclusion

  A society is a common-wealth, it is formed to best serve the common-good of the common-people and whatever it is you believe that you are, I am here to remind you that you are a common-person. No one person, of the vast states we live within, is better than any other; we all work together to protect one another and enforce each other’s common-interest. This is the reason why your neighbour will call the police if he sees someone breaking into your house, and this is the reason that people enter your store expecting to offer you money for your products and services: because these are stipulations which we have all implicitly agreed to in order to preserve the common-good. Think twice before you claim to have done anything ‘on your own’, because you live in a vast society and are being assisted by the denizens of that society every day; often you do not know you are being helped by them, and often they do not realize they are helping you. Perhaps their intentions are selfishly-motivated, but that does not detract from the fact that their selfish-motivations help you to succeed. An employee comes to work each day for, typically, selfish-motivations, but that does not detract from the assistance he provides to your company. Such assistance is worth money to you in fact, and you pay the employee to continue to assist you in the future. What then is so different about societal-assistance? Why do we not pay everyone in society for unknowingly helping us to succeed? Perhaps because we do not have the money to pay for the assistance of even a small community, let alone an entire society. But perhaps we need not pay them directly, perhaps all we need afford them is the ability to pay themselves? Perhaps it is in everyone’s ‘self-interest’ to accept more stringent restrictions upon their personal liberties in order to attain a freer state? As the old idiom goes: a chain is only as strong as its weakest link; therefore if a chains weakest link is quite weak, then the entire chain is quite weak as a whole, because it is a system which is dependent upon each of the individual parts of itself. What then might this mean for a chain of which 53% of its links are weak? I am compelled to admit that such a chain seems quite shabby indeed.

Works Cited

Berlin, Isaiah. “Two Concepts of Liberty”. The Idea of Freedom, ed. Alan Ryan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. 175 – 93. PDF.

Hobbes, Thomas. “Of the Liberty of Subjects”. Leviathan. Penguin Books Ltd: 1985. Strand, London. Print.

Macpherson, C.B. “Introduction” to Robert Meynell, Canadian Idealism and the Philosophy of Freedom (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2011), pp. xi – xii.

McMahone, Tamsin. “Political Donations: How parties pay the rent”. National Post. April 23, 2011. 03/03/2016. Web. URL = http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/political-donations-in-canada
N.a. “Subjective Social Class Membership”. Lard Bucket. 2008. 03/03/2016. Web. URL = http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/sociology-comprehensive-edition/s11-03-social-class-in-the-united-sta.html

Rousseau, Jean-Jaques. “The Social Contract”. Trans. G.D.H. Cole. The Social Contract And Discourses. Ed. P.D. Jimack. Tuttle Publishing, North Clarendon, VT, USA: 1993. Print.

Moving Matter Machine

Cyril C. House
Philosophy of Mind
14/02/2016

Moving Matter Machine

Introduction

  Are you free? Is freedom an actual, or even potential, attribute of the human experience? I think, in many contexts, most of us are free: freedom from slavery for example. In other contexts however, freedom becomes a much more uncertain claim, such as freedom from the conditions of one’s upbringing. Then so too are there such uncertain claims as are freedom of the will, or more precisely: the availability of multiple potentials in choice situations. I place an emphasis upon the word choice due to the fact that if freedom of the will is an illusion then so too would the appearance of ‘choice situations’ be an illusion the same.  In this essay I shall briefly explore the concept of freedom of the will, and detail why it is I have come to believe that we all are, in such a context, truly free.

Framework

  Benjamin Libet performed a series of experiments in the early 1980’s which were, by many, interpreted to disprove free will in action. It was thought by most at this time that to perform a voluntary action, one must first will the action so. The willing of the action would set off a causal chain of events which moved throughout the body to result in the predetermined action. Now back in 1964, Kornhuber and Deecke, a pair of German scientists, performed an experiment which showed there to be an increase of electrical activity in the brains of subjects just before they would perform some action (Information Philosopher). The discovery of Kornhuber and Deecke, in addition to some prodding by John Eccles (Information Philosopher), led Libet to begin running experiments to examine where it was free will fit into all of this. Libet subsequently placed subjects in front of a rapid-spinning clock and asked them to decide to flex their right finger at random; they should note where the clock was when they willed the action so, and again note the clock when the action was in-performance. Meanwhile Libet was scanning for and measuring their neural activity, in expectation of this electrical activity discovered by Kornhuber and Deecke. What he discovered is that the conscious willing of the action fell at such a time that electrical activity was already taking place in the brain. This meant that the ‘will’ could not possibly be causing the electrical activity, and if the electrical activity caused the movement or the action, without being preceded by a conscious willing of such an action, then we must be misunderstanding something about how the willing of an action takes place. A position has been suggested which seems to sweep the conflict under the rug, what is Epiphenomenalism, the belief that the Mind, and so therefore too the Will, are phenomena which are the result of brain activity; such as the ‘exhaust fumes’ of the brain (Clarke)(Clark). However I cannot agree with such a claim, for I believe the Mind and Will to be of too paramount-centrality within the lives of us all, to possibly be a non-causal-by-product of some much less interesting system within us.

  When you think about the provided information, what conclusion is it you come to? Do you agree with the apparent science of the matter? Or do you feel there must be something which the scientists are missing when discussing this topic? I am of the latter opinion, I see several flimsy parts involved in this experiment and they are flimsy regardless of the interpretation one takes away from the data presented. The first inaccuracy I find is the method of qualification of a Willing Experience. Humans are likely one of the most fallible sources of information there is, even if they do not intend to be mistaken they often are due to the plain fact that there remains a universal disjunction between the incoming communication concerning a matter and the degree of comprehension of that matter. Much can be done to mend such a divide in any given circumstance, yet nonetheless there will never be a perfectly accurate representation of understanding gleaned from a source of outside communication. After exercising myself in a home trial of the Libet Experiment, I become most concerned with specifically which portioned-progression of the act of willing one is to call ‘the moment of the willing’. Is it to be the portion of the willing when I begin to consider that ‘anytime now’ ought to be random enough and therefore I ought to act? Or perhaps the portion of the willing after I have decided precisely on the moment in which the act shall occur? Or ought it to be the portion of the willing as the will is transferring and coming to embody the physical convulsions appropriate for motion? My point is that such an indeterminate discrepancy cannot possibly yield determinate data.

  The second inaccuracy is to be found again in the methods of the experiment: the subjects were instructed to move the right finger at a random time; therefore they had already compiled the decision and stored it away for later use by the time they were being examined. One could argue that there is little to no ‘willing’ involved in a predetermined action. Therefore the willing of the action is sitting in the chamber of the mind, and so the readiness potential to perform the predetermined action could in no way predate its willing of. Now Libet had similar considerations upon reviewing his own data, and tentatively concluding that the brain initiated action before the subject seemed to will it so. ‘Well if the will does not initiate action’ Libet must have thought, ‘then perhaps it can inhibit action’. He placed a new spin on his experiment: the subject were to now will the flexing of their finger, but before the action manifested itself they were to suppress their original intention and veto the physical movement. What was discovered is that the subjects were, in fact, able to suppress the transition of electrical activity into motor function. These series’ of experiments by Libet and his colleagues remains in the conversation of today as it has come to fuel a spectacular degree of contemporary research into the nature of agency and authorship of action.

Exploration

  Thomas Hobbes said “[t]hat when a thing lies still, unlesse somewhat els stirre it, it will lye still for ever, it is a truth that no man doubts of. But that when a thing is in motion, it will eternally be in motion, unless somewhat els stay it” (4). The nature of the Universe and its constituent parts seems arguably to be matter in motion (Hobbes). The zenith of the known cosmos inevitably stretches away from wherever it may have begun, planets circle their stars, and electrons orbit their nucleuses. So too do human babies crawl around, human adults drive to and fro, and human species migrate. It seems foolish to consider that something could ever not be moving, for should a man so cease to walk then so forth shall he be carried by the rotation of the globe; and should the globe so cease to spin, then so forth shall it be carried by the elaboration of the cosmos; and should the cosmos cease to grow, then still would the atoms spin within it. What then, I ask, what then is the justification for the consideration that human agents ought to hold some form of control over whether they move forth with the rest of known existence? Whether or not they ‘will’ it to be so. I say no, I say that human beings and human consciousness is dragged forth within the inevitable grind of its world, for most would lack the motivation to will themselves about each day, were this not the case. However this need not imply some style of absolutely deterministic existence, for there is still the phenomenon of Free Won’t displayed by Libet’s second string of experimentation. For should my life be as though I am careening downwards on the face of some unending hill, the air rushing by as my experience, then still do I possess the power of inhibition: I dig my right foot in and I veer to the right, I dig my left foot in and I veer to the left, I dig both feet in and the air rushes by slightly slower. This is the power of Free Won’t, and it is in fact an even greater power than Free Will. Should Free Will be the case, then I need always put out in order to gain reciprocal experience, and this seems to be a highly inefficient strategy; however should Free Won’t be the case, then I need not exert any effort to receive reciprocal experience because it is forced into me by my sheer forward velocity, but should I be receiving experience which I do not agree with, then I am able to exert my efforts to alter my path down the great hill, and with my efforts arrive new opportunities of experience from the other side of the street.

Conclusion

  In attempting to come to a closer understanding of the nature and plausibility of free will of action we have briefly reviewed the work of Kornhuber & Deecke, which led us into a discussion of some of the works of Benjamin Libet. After reviewing his original experiement I took the time to address two of my major concerns with his methodology, and in discussing the implications of such methodological flaws we arrived at Libet’s second-string of experimentation which was the testing of the suppressive capabilities of the will. After concluding that there seems to be such a capability, or faculty rather, as Free Won’t, I turned to argue from my own perceptions that Free Will seems to imply that one could fail to will some sequence of things and so therefore too fail to be ‘in motion’, which would be incompatible with the most basic observations of the Universe. After my expository comment on the aforementioned observations of the Universe I concluded in congruence with Libet’s second experiment that Free Won’t seems the most plausible case. Now, in accordance with my opening statements I conclude that Free Won’t is in fact the perfect freedom, for with it one is free to ‘not will’ without the concern of becoming static matter, to speak metonymically. Yet so too are we free to will the cessation or alteration of actions and procedures initiated by our unconscious brains, a faculty what is known as Free Won’t.

Works Cited

Clark, Andy. “Appendix II”. Mindware: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive Science. Oxford University Press: New York, 2014. Print.

Clarke, Peter G.H. “The Libet Experiment and its Implications for Conscious Will”. Be Thinking. 15/05/2014. 28/03/2016. Web. URL = http://www.bethinking.org/human-life/the-libet-experiment-and-its-implications-for-conscious-will

Hobbes, Thomas. “Leviathan: Or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil”. Everyman’s Library: Great Britain, 1965. Print.

Hobbes, Thomas. “Of Imagination”. Leviathan: Or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil. Everyman’s Library: Great Britain, 1965. 04 – 08. Print.

Libet Experiments. Information Philosopher. 27/03/2016. Web. URL = http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/libet_experiments.html

Secondary Considerations

Cyril C. House
Philosophy of Mind

Secondary Considerations

       Most religions today, as well as most spiritualist doctrines, hold the belief (or something akin to) that life goes on after death. Some believe that the dead are shipped off to live in a remote plane of existence, while others believe that individuals are ‘reborn’ in new bodies/forms. Although similar to one another in many respects, each belief system is unique. However, there is at least a single, assured, thread which runs through all belief systems of this type. That thread is the notion that there is something else, something which is not the physical body, and which is the thing what is teleported, or transported, to somewhere else, upon receipt of the death of the physical body. The Soul, The Spirit- this thing is referenced by these names, and others. However, for the moderate degree of consensus that there is some thing, it is decidedly less agreed upon precisely what that thing is. This is because the thing of which I/they speak is immaterial. That is to say it is not discernible by physical experimentation or observation, and we know of no method(s) for testing/observing for nonphysical/immaterial phenomena. Why then do so many believe in that which they can neither detect, nor even sufficiently describe? Let us then look into the matter at hand. Following I shall summarise the key points of the substance dualism debate, and attempt to explain precisely why substance dualism is an outdated, and incorrect assumption/theory.

       Substance Dualists have many strong arguments, among them is the notion that mental states/objects can perform actions which physical states/objects cannot. For example I, a physical person, can hypothesize about the concluding sentences of this paper, and I am able to draw relatively accurate portrayals of both the literal words which will be used, as well as the (less tangible) impact which they shall have on the reader. The egg cartons tacked to my wall cannot hypothesize about anything, they can neither hypothesize about the physical words which I shall write in my conclusion, nor can they hypothesize about the intangible impact which my words shall have. Why can they not? Simple, say Substance Dualists, they cannot hypothesize because they are lacking the required mental supervenience which performs abstract functions such as hypothesization. To combat this claim you may tell them that computers are things which can ‘hypothesize’ about future states of things if they are so encoded. Yet they would say back to you that such an account of hypothesization is entirely incomplete and therefore is not hypothesization at all. It is an incomplete account because although it can predict the tangible, (the future states of a certain spreadsheet for example) it cannot predict, nor does it even acknowledge that there is such a thing as, the intangible associations inextricably linked to the physical result. Herein the Substance Dualist holds a very strong position indeed, but aside from this (and perhaps a few other) argument(s) the Substance Dualist is indeed urinating in the direction of an oncoming tempest, as I shall explain hereafter.

       Now I wish to draw your attention to a statement I made in the introductory paragraph: “we know of no method(s) for testing/observing for nonphysical/immaterial phenomena”. What this statement, or fact rather, implies is that we have no way to check if or if not there is such a thing as an immaterial substance. This being the case, it follows that we have no way to run experiments on an immaterial substance. This being the case, it follows that we cannot explain anything about this substance. This is a problem because of the Theory of Causation: all things which are have a sufficient and complete explanation for how they came to be. So to perform a G.E. Moore Shift on the antecedent information will result in an argument as such:

1. All things which are have a sufficient and complete explanation for how they came to be

2. We have no way to test for the existence of an immaterial substance

Therefore

3. We cannot explain how an immaterial substance came to be

Therefore

4. An immaterial substance is not.

Now, the resolute substance dualist will point out that simply because we have not discovered the explanation yet, does not mean that the explanation is not there. For thousands of years mankind knew nothing about microbiology, yet that did not deter Leeuwenhoek from discovering it (Boundless). But there is a flaw with this argument in the case of Substance Dualism.

       The case of Leeuwenhoek and the discovery of microbiology is a valid argument because before the discovery was made there was an aspect of the world (Ex. disease, rotting food, foul breath) which could not be completely and sufficiently explained. There were of course rudimentary explanations such as a failure to sacrifice enough goats in order to appease the gods; so then the gods would use their ‘magic’ and POOF: your breath smells as though you defecated in your own mouth. Even back then such an explanation was insufficient, mainly because of this word ‘magic’. What is magic? How does magic work? Such questions require an answer to be able to comprehend the word magic, and so therefore too such a comprehension of magic is necessary to a sufficient explanation of why grandpa’s breath is so foul. So again we have this fallacy in that we cannot explain magic so therefore magic is neither a thing nor an explanation for things. So here now we bleed into the claims of the substance dualist. Why can the case of microbiology not be the case for Substance Dualism? Why can we not posit ‘we just don’t know yet, and therefore we cannot say one way or the other’? The reason we cannot is because of the extant explanation of that which Substance Dualism attempts to elucidate.

If you ask a physiologist to describe what happens when [Grandpa] runs away from a lion, they will say something like this. Running occurs when certain muscle groups- especially muscles in the thigh- contract powerfully. The thigh muscles contract because they are stimulated by certain nerves. Those nerves arise in the spine, and are in turn stimulated by special spinal nerves. The spinal nerves in their turn are stimulated by the motor cortex- the part of the brain devoted to the initiation and control of movement (Ravenscroft).

Note that nothing being explained here has to do with immaterial substances. Note also that there is a complete and sufficient explanation of running. So too is there a complete and sufficient explanation for all things which have to do with both vital and voluntary motions; that is to say that motions of the blood, the breath, the excrement, the nutrition, as well as motions of the thought, the action, the pursuit, the avoidance et cetera, are all completely and sufficiently explained by physiology, and if not by physiology then by another hard science such as physics or biochemistry. Thusforth it follows that this thing what it is which Substance Dualism attempts to offer an explanation of, is in no need of an explanation for it has already been explained!

       Furthermore, might the substance dualist claim, there is such a thing which has not been explained by science, and this this thing is called consciousness; this is a valid claim. There are many working theories of how consciousness comes to be, and exactly what the nature of consciousness is, but to date there is no sufficient and complete explanation of the nature of consciousness. Does this lend credence to the substance dualist’s argument? Unlikely at best. If I feel a slap on the right side of my face, and I turn around to see you standing there before turning back around; then I feel another slap on the right side of my face and turn around to see you standing there again, and again I turn back around; then I feel a slap on the left side of my face, is it realistic to turn around expecting to see my mother there? Certainly not.

       So here we are, having now been briefed on the subject of Substance Dualism, a few of its strongest arguments, and reasons why these arguments are unfounded in the modern day world. In millennia past substance dualists had a highly legitimate theory for the explanation of certain things in their world. They now however, have been corrected by modern science. Substance dualists explained the way the world works in a pretty good way, but then physiology, biochemistry, kinesiology, and other hard sciences came along and explained the way the world works, not just pretty good, but precisely; completely and sufficiently. Maybe there is some sort of immaterial substance out amongst the world, but we cannot know anything about it, and therefore we cannot use it to explain things which we do know are out there. Science has unveiled ways to reveal the secrets of that which we do know to exist, and therefore to debate the matter of Substance Dualism is methodologically futile.

Works Cited

       “History of Microbiology: Hooke, van Leeuwenhoek, and Cohn.” Boundless Microbiology. Boundless, 21 Jul. 2015. Retrieved 27 Jan. 2016 from https://www.boundless.com/microbiology/textbooks/boundless-microbiology-textbook/introduction-to-microbiology-1/introduction-to-microbiology-18/history-of-microbiology-hooke-van-leeuwenhoek-and-cohn-204-8020/

       Ravenscroft, Ian. “Dualism”. Philosophy of Mind: A Beginner’s Guide. Oxford University Press, 2005. 09 – 24. Print.

Digital Savagery

Cyril C. House
Mass Communication and Popular Culture
16/01/2016

Digital Savagery

       The digital revolution brought along with it myriad unique phenomena. And as all new things which come to be and replace those things which came before, these phenomena are subject to the relentless scrutiny of millions of minds. People need to know, and therefore people tend to study, exactly what the possibilities, the draw-backs, the implications, and the dangers of these things are before it is seen fit to permit them without further inquiry in amongst our societies, our civilizations, our lives. Text messages: do they de-sensitize us from human connection, or do they allow a deeper sense of intimacy? Televisions: are they mind-washing machines designed to keep society enslaved upon the couch, or are they educational viewports which look out unto a world too vast to comprehend without their magic? Video games: are they easy ways for children to become infatuated with crime and violence, or are they advanced machines of education designed for interactivity and applicability? These all are questions which society unveils the answers to more and more every day. It is the lattermost topic I will be concerned with herein as I look into the work of a number of people whom study video games and the effects which video games have on peoples’ abilities to learn and comprehend. Although not without opposition, it is the consensus of the authors which I have researched that video games not only have a positive influence on cognitive training, but also allow for a truly revolutionary way of thinking about, looking at, and interacting with the world in which we live.

       The criticisms unveiled by my analysis are fairly conventional arguments. The primary criticism is a rather striking fact: 96.8% of male [video game] users objectify the virtual environment, as well as use others for their own personal gain (Paraskeva et al.); this would seem to rest on the foundation that “mercy doesn’t have an experience point value” (Sofge). The secondary criticism of video games as learning tools is that the typical game is either full of incorrect information, or else has fairly accurate information on only a very narrow topic of focus. The problem with that is this: video games are being learned from, one way or another, but it seems that what the games are teaching has the potential to leave a person more misinformed than if they had learned nothing about the subject in the first place (Dickey). Some in the field wish to correct this error by building games specifically intended to teach. The problem with this is that teachers make good lessons, but often terrible games; and game designers make good games, but often terrible lessons (Dickey). The products which each of these parties will put out is referred to as a ‘Shavian Reversal’. Shavian Reversal is a term coined by Professor Seymour Papert, and it denotes an offspring which received the hereditary gift of the worst qualities of both of its parents (Eck). In the context of game design this would mean a drill-and-kill learning sequence, devoid of any enjoyment. It has been suggested that instead of trying to combine the two skillsets of game design and educating, what instead should be done is to allow each party to play to their own strengths. What this would look like is allowing a game, Call of Duty for example, to be produced by game designers with the aim of entertainment. Followingly educators would step up to the plate; for example a professor of history would get his students to play a section of the Call of Duty game and the next day in class there would be a critical analysis of how the war and the battles are depicted in the gameplay, against how the war and battles are depicted in the history books. This way the professor could fill in missing information, correct false information et cetera (Eck), and from the students’ point of view the information becomes suddenly relevant! “What [they] must learn is directly related to the environment [they] learn within” (Eck); this sort of relevant learning is known as situated cognition (Eck). For “Lions do not learn to hunt through direct instruction but through modeling and play” (Eck). Another specific, successful, example is seen as Teacher Librarians use Minecraft (a game in which you quite literally construct the world you are within, from micro to macro aspects) to have students take the things which they have been learning and actually build a demonstration or a presentation into their Minecraft world (Hovious, Eck).

       There is a great deal of research in the social sciences which supports game based learning as a tool to teach specific concepts, yet also is there much research supporting game based learning as a tool to teach much more abstract things. Games are a highly-valued source of learning, because of the necessity to, within them, employ a great deal of higher-order thinking, which is the thinking involved in such processes as hypothesis testing and strategization (Paraskeva et al.). The training of such faculties is crucial to the development of a capable mind, and therefore of a capable society. Simply realizing there is a problem, realizing there is a way past the problem, and trying different things until something works. In the last decade or so there has been a surge in the popularity of Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs), which are a subset of the similarly popular parent genre Massive Multiplayer Online games (MMOs). Due to the advance in internet technology, game players are now immersed in artificial worlds where every other character they come across in the game is being actively played by another human somewhere else in the world. No longer can a nerd skate by on devilish strategization and fast fingers alone, now there is a new element of community, or teamwork which is necessary to operate effectively in the game environment (Dickey)(Paraskeva et al.). Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) allows players to communicate in real time, and in the midst of engaging with the game. That is to say a player need not take focus away from the task at hand in order to type out messages to his guild/party/raid team; the player now just speaks into the microphone in front of his or her face and communicates/strategizes/accommodates/theorizes et cetera on the fly. Research brings up very interesting phenomena when studying MMO/MMORPGs. Dickey found that many students whom were quiet and shy in the classroom, when engaged in a MMO environment, took on extensive leadership roles within the game, playing into such roles as mentor, or rather playing Master to the newer Apprentices. Although this seemed not to carry across mediums- that is to say students were still very reserved individuals in the physical world regardless of the mentorships they may have entered into within the game (Dickey)- I think it is nonetheless a crucial that these, apparently, natural leaders have some place where they feel comfortable enough to express those attributes of themselves.

       I would now like to turn our attentions slightly. There is a concept known as cognitive disequilibrium. Cognitive disequilibrium is when one holds two contradictory beliefs about the world, and it forces one to adapt either one or the other belief so that one’s world-view re-aligns harmoniously (Eck). Cognitive disequilibrium is complimented by one’s ability to reason about the contradiction, and come to a resolution. A well-made video game is effective because of how it creates cognitive disequilibrium without exceeding the capacity of the player to succeed in resolving the contradiction (Eck). Now I will jump into an adjacent lane for a moment. Video games, by their very nature, present what is known as a procedural rhetoric (Bogost). Procedural rhetoric, simply put, is the way in which video games ‘talk about’ things in the world, more specifically about procedures in the world. Games present pseudo-realistic processes to the player, which the player must overcome or otherwise deal with, and these processes are modelled after the way that the real world works. Therefore video gamers have the unique opportunity to run hypothesis experiments in a padded environment. Bogost begins his article discussing Animal Crossing, which is a video game in which “[t]he player is penniless upon arrival, and the game quickly thrusts him into the reality of making ends meet” (Bogost). To a critical mind Animal Crossing models consumer capitalism. Bogost’s five-year-old plays Animal Crossing as well, and so is placed into the procedural rhetoric of consumer capitalism and faced with the cognitive disequilibrium of whether or not to take out a mortgage on a larger home. She wants a big house, like her dad’s Animal Crossing house. Also she wants to buy more material goods like toys and couches and wallpaper, but she needs more space to put it all in. Yet the more she spends on mortgage payments the less she is able to spend on new toys and wallpapers, and so here we have a surprisingly complex system of contradiction of desires, but it is laid out in a way that this five-year-old knows what is going on and approximately how to deal with her problem (Bogost). The way in which the procedural rhetoric presents the cognitive disequilibrium of mortgaging is not nearly as complicated as it might be analyzed to seem. The kid just runs around collecting bugs and selling them at the store, making ‘mortgage payments’ with the profits; when she has paid off the whole mortgage the shop owner/loan shark offers to ‘upgrade’ her home again, which will incur another, larger mortgage (Bogost). Maybe this sounds educational for a five-year-old and not so much for an independent young adult who has been managing money for years? Well it has educational benefits to the more experienced borrower as well:

In real life when we pay our mortgage bill we don’t see where the money ends up. But in Animal Crossing, the player experiences the way his debt makes the bankers wealthy. After a player makes a major payment to his mortgage, Tom Nook [the lender] closes his shop and upgrades it; the game starts with Nook’s Cranny, a wooden shack general store, and ends with Nookington’s, a two-story department store . . . Tom Nook is a condensation of the corporate bourgeoisie, Tom is the only character with which the player makes transactions of any kind and so it is easy to see the effects of the redistribution of wealth in ways children are fully capable of comprehending (Bogost). 

Additionally consider that this is just a single instance of procedural rhetoric, a sample of a single instance of the practice stages of life which video games provide.

       So here now together we have travelled upon only the outskirts of the debate of video games as learning tools. We have discussed the most common objections which arise, being that people (men especially so) tend to objectify both environments as well as others when gaming, using things solely for their own personal gain; which obviously brings up questions about ethics, morality, and to what effect such behaviours in-game will carry over into real life. The other objection was that video games which are enjoyable are not educational, and video games which are educational are not enjoyable. In response to this latter objection there was proposed an ingenious method of allowing the educators to educate with what the designers design, and regardless of the incorrect or missing content therein. After this we breached the topic of MMO/MMORPGs and the implications and effects of such advances in technology. To conclude we discussed cognitive disequilibrium within the environment of procedural rhetoric. As I mentioned just now, these are only the very fringes of this debate. There is much more to be learned, and much more that has been learned which has not been covered herein. Yet even so I feel confident in restating that video games not only have a positive influence on cognitive training, but also allow for a truly revolutionary way of thinking about, looking at, and interacting with the world in which we live.

Works Cited

       Bogost, Ian. “The Rhetoric of Video Games." The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning. Edited by Katie Salen. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on

       Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. 117–140. PDF.

       Dickey, Michele D. “World of Warcraft and the impact of game culture and play in an undergraduate game design course”. Computers & Education: An International Journal. 200 – 209. Elsevier Ltd, 2011. PDF.

       Eck, Richard Van. “Digital Game-Based Learning: It’s Not Just the Digital Natives Who Are Restless….”. EDUCAUSE Review, 2006. Vol. 41, no. 2. PDF.

       Hovious, Amanda S., Richard N Van Eck. “Digital Games for 21st-Century Learning: teacher Librarians’ Beliefs and Practices”. Teacher Librarian. EL Kurdyla Publishing LLC, 2015. PDF

       Paraskeva, Fotini, Sofia Mysirlaki, Aikaterini Papagianni. “Multiplayer online games as educational tools: Facing new challenged in learning”. Computers & Education: An International Journal. 498 – 505. Elsevier Ltd, 2010. PDF.

       Sofge, E. (2008). Orc holocaust: The reprehensible moral universe of Gary Gygax’s Dungeons & Dragons. Retrieved 10.03.08 from. Slate. http://www.slate.com/id/2186203/.

Without You

Cyril C. House
Metaphysics
26/10/2015

Without You

       “We are the cosmos made conscious and life is the means by which the universe understands itself” (Cox). Life is an eternally mysterious force, seconded in curiosity only to the phenomena of consciousness. Consciousness is requiring of life, although life is not requiring of consciousness; and it is for this reason that I conclude it apt to look into consciousness, in hopes of revealing further answers to the many questions of life. As Science and Philosophy continue to investigate and draw conclusions regarding the nature of consciousness: one, among many, questions which remain is “[h]ow can a bunch of things that do not individually think or sense or have perception add up to something that does think or sense or have perception? How could their causal interaction produce such properties?”  (Inwagen 235).  I have launched a bountiful inquiry into this subject, and will now present my findings to support my theory that consciousness can be achieved as a result of the interactions of components which do not themselves possess consciousness.

       Consciousness has arisen from life, perhaps it is then life itself which will serve as an estimable foundational-block in explaining consciousness itself. Abiogenesis is the process within which life arises from components not themselves alive, although this theory has yet to be either proven or disproven, I believe its likeness is suitably paralleled by the field of Biomechanics. Biomechanics, also known as Biomedical Engineering, is the science of creating synthetic body parts to substitute for the loss of existing biological parts, or to enhance existent biological parts which themselves operate either poorly or not at all. It is truly a fascinating field because of the disjunction between biology and technology. Biology deals with carbon-based systems, while technology deals with silicon-based systems; we have long debated the possibility of using the two elements interchangeably. In many science fiction stories writers propose the existence of silicon-based life forms as an alternative to our carbon-based biological structure, and as a result of these writings another debate has been spurred regarding the possibility of silicon-based life forms. The reason the two discussions of these debates are not irrational is because of the similarities between carbon and silicon in how they interact with other elements. Carbon and silicon appear beside each other vertically in the periodic table, and what this means is that they both have an extensive capability for interaction with other elements. Many elements can only form one or two bonds when interacting with others. Carbon and silicon are each capable of forming four bonds when interacting with others, as can be denoted by their being in the same column in the periodic table. This allows the molecular structures of the compounds they create to be widely more diverse, and therefore to allow a more complex array of possibilities. Life is complex and therefore requires a complex array of possibilities to form; silicon and carbon are both perfect for this necessary complexity. The reason the elements further down in the same column, as well as the elements further to the right of said column, are not realistic for life is because of the distance from the nucleus which those elements form their own bonds, making them less stable (Environ)(Templeton). In our everyday life we have come to use silicon as a primary material for constructing technological equipment such as computers. Computers have had a magnificent impact on both our quality of life, as well as our ability to sustain life, but computers are not themselves alive; they are just machines which do what we ask of them. However, this view may now be changing. It has been discovered that technology can be used to support biology; silicon systems can be used to replace/enhance biological systems. The current understanding of technology we possess will let us replace almost every organ and structure in the human body with a simple 3D printer. What does this have to do with consciousness though? The case is that “[h]uman skin relies on cutaneous receptors that output digital signals for tactile sensing in which the intensity of stimulation is converted to a series of voltage pulses. We [have developed] a power-efficient skin-inspired mechanoreceptor with a flexible organic transistor circuit that transduces pressure into digital frequency signals directly. The output frequency ranges between 0 and 200 hertz, with a sublinear response to increasing force stimuli that mimics slow-adapting skin mechanoreceptors . . . This work represents a step toward the design and use of large-area organic electronic skins with neural-integrated touch feedback for replacement limbs” (Benjamin C.K. Tee et al.). This is all a lot of technical jargon which boils down to the fact that Biomedical Engineers have developed a technology to replace skin. Not just skin that will cover the organs and provide protection from the wind and the dust, but skin that is able to feel what it is touching. Here is a concrete example of a product which itself possesses an attribute or feature which its component pieces do not themselves have: tactile sensation. Challengers of Emergentism will likely claim that the tactile sensation of the pseudo-skin created by these bioengineers, and the tactile sensation of true biological skin are too different to be accurately compared. It may be stated that since the pseudo-skin requires some sort of programming to understand what it is supposed to do, and that the sensations it produces are manufactured and not natural sensations. But does our human DNA not contain similar programming to help our biological skin understand what to do? And are both sensations not caused by miniature electrical impulses emitted from some location on the body and received by the brain? Another dispute put forth will be that the pseudo-skin does not itself have tactile sensation, it simply allows for the conditions in which the brain experiences tactile sensation. This latter claim again presents the logical fallacy known as the Superman-Argument; meaning that natural skin too: only ‘allows the conditions in which the brain experiences tactile sensation’ and thus our emergent property stands firm.

       Mathematics typically provide an indefensible method of argumentation for all manner of claims. The mathematics which I intend to use to support my theory of consciousness will seem entirely irrational at first, but I assure you I am able to support my mathematical claims as strongly as I am able to support my consciousness claims.  My math is as follows: 1 + 2 = 4. What this means is that 1 + 1 + 1 combine to equal their ‘sum’, but also to now contain something which was not there before, which in this case is an additional 1, and it is produced by the causal interactions of the other three units. Allow me to provide an example: Carrie, Jim, and Thomas are three friends whom enjoy hiking in the mountains together. Each has a unique relationship with each the other, so Carrie and Jim have a particular way they interact with one another when together, as do Carrie and Thomas, as do Thomas and Jim. That is three individuals and three individual relationships. When the three friends are all with one another, in the mountains hiking for example, there emerges a fourth relationship; a fourth ‘person’ appears and this person is called the We-All. The We-All constitutes both an emergent set of actions, as well as an emergent set of concerns. When Carrie is hanging out with Jim, she acts in a certain way and is concerned about how Jim is perceiving her; when she hangs out with Thomas she acts in a certain way, which is unique from the set of actions used with Jim, and she is concerned with how Jim is perceiving her. When they all get together and the We-All comes out, Carrie now acts in a way that is unique from her actions with Jim, and also unique from her actions with Thomas, she acts in a hybrid manner. To illustrate my point, imagine that Jim likes explicit sexual humour and that Thomas feels that explicit sexual humour is inappropriate, so when Carrie is with Jim she makes sexual jokes, and when she is with Thomas she does not. When the three are together, Carrie begins to cater to the We-All, and now she will make highly ambiguous adult references, in such a manner that Jim is able to laugh at her comments but at the same time Thomas is not offended by them. Furthermore the individuals are no longer concerned plainly with one another, they now must be concerned for the We-All as well. So as they walk up the mountain Carrie will ask herself ‘am I okay?’, she will then ask ‘are Jim and I okay?’ as well as ‘are Thomas and I okay?’ and finally ‘is the We-All okay?’, or in other words ‘are we all okay, and functioning well as a group?’. The We-All is not an empirically observable occurrence, and opponents may claim that it is simply a medley of individual relationships, not an individual thing. But if it were a medley of relationships then one could imagine a group of say six people together having several medleys of relationships occurring. There would be a We-All between Carrie and Jim and Thomas and a We-All between Nancy and Fredrick and Jenny and a We-All between the six of them together, but there is not, there is a single We-All and it is either well or not well, efficient or inefficient, and it is always We-All as in all of us together and at the same time. Going back to the original three person situation: each relationship is worth only one unit, but when you add together several individual units the causal interaction between the lot of them produces an additional unit which cannot be measured or empirically observed, but the matter of its existence is a brute fact. Furthermore this additional unit is not self-sustaining, for if the units separate then the emergent unit dissipates; it is only ever produced when all units are acting together, no more, no less.

       A tertiary source of support is the case of transmuter-compounds possessing qualities which their components do not have, thus providing more concrete evidence in favour of causal interactions between components resulting in

1. Something which was not there to begin with, and 

2. Something which is not ‘visible’ so to speak. 

Transmutation, more popularly known as Alchemy, is commonly misconstrued as a chemical process, and as such it is known to be a myth. Transmutation itself is not a myth however, simply transmutation via chemical processes. It actually requires a vastly greater amount of energy to change a substance into something it is not, and this massive amount of energy is achieved by nuclear processes, not chemical. There are two ways to transmute an element, they are either to smash neutrons into the element, or allow the element to decay, meaning it will lose neutrons over time (Silva). Radioactive substances are what I am most intrigued by in the field of both transmutation, as well as consciousness. Thorium is a highly-radioactive substance, and when left to itself it follows a process of decay and turns into Actinium, another radioactive substance. Actinium then decays into the radioactive Radon, Radon into the radioactive Polonium, and Polonium into the radioactive Bismuth. When Bismuth decays however, it turns into Lead (Silva) (Jefferson Labs). Lead is not a radioactive substance. As I mentioned before, a substance decaying means it is losing neutrons and the only other form of transmutation is nuclear reaction, which means slamming neutrons into a substance. So following the, aforementioned, chain of decay in the opposite direction: it is plain to see how one could take Lead and, smashing a neutron into it, produce Bismuth. This is pivotal because Lead does not possess the attribute of radioactivity, nor does an individual neutron; but the way in which they interact with one another produces Bismuth which absolutely does possess the attribute of radioactivity! If you allow Bismuth to decay (in other words allow Bismuth and the neutron to separate) then it again becomes lead and is no longer radioactive. Only when interacting with one another in a very specific way do these two components produce a substance with radioactivity. Radioactivity is not detectable by any human senses, but we can say with absolute certainty that it is there. We understand methods to test for radioactivity in a substance, but these methods must be applied for us to know that something is radioactive; just as we have methods to test for consciousness in an organism, such as communication with it, and such a method must be applied to be able to determine whether or not the organism is conscious.

       It is assumed by many religious doctrines that advanced human consciousness is ‘injected’, by some divine power, into an otherwise existentially-unaware organism; that such an unexplainable phenomena could not possibly arise on its own. But we are surrounded by pristine examples of ‘unexplainable phenomena’ such as synthetic skin with tactile sensation, the We-All, and radioactivity. Not only do these examples readily appear in our worldly lives, but they are supported by some of the most elementary knowledge we have of the world in which we live: biology, mathematics, and physics. For a single-cellular-proto-organism to arise out of the oceans of the deep past is incredible, for it to begin reproducing is even more incredible, to eventually evolve to a complex organism with base consciousness is more incredible yet! Why then is it such a stretch to believe that one further incredible thing might happen, base consciousness evolving to advanced consciousness? I believe a large portion of the devotion to the antithesis of my claims comes from the idea that advanced (human) consciousness is somehow special, that it makes us unique, but there is very little evidence, if any at all, to support such an opinion. The fact that humans are the only known organism to possess ‘advanced consciousness’ in the negatable cross-section of the Universe we have explored may suggest that it is a unique phenomenon as far as we can tell, but to go on to say that because it is unique therefore it is positively-special is a bit of a stretch. Without consciousness I become nothing discernible in this world of wonders, yet it is only to be conscious that it is to discern, and so without consciousness I need not be discernible. Without consciousness I am nothing, yet it is only with consciousness that I find myself needing to be anything.

Works Cited

Cox, Brian. Goodreads Inc. N.d. Web. 31/10/2015. URL =                                                                            http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/458513-we-are-the-cosmos-made-conscious-and-life-is-the

Inwagen, Peter Van. “Dualism and Physicalism”. Metaphysics. 4 Ed. Westview Press: Boulder, CO,          2015.  Print.

N.a. “Materials For Life”. Carnegie Mellon University. 2003. Web. 14/11/2015. URL =                              http://environ.andrew.cmu.edu/m3/s5/05materials.shtml

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Templeton, Graham. “Geek Answers: Why is all life carbon-based?”. Geek. 04/10/2013. Web.                  14/11/2015. URL = http://www.geek.com/science/geek-answers-why-is-all-life-carbon-                      based-1572567/

Unintentional Conspirators

Cyril C. House
Political Philosophy
06/11/2014

Unintentional Conspirators

       “Authority is the right to command, and correlatively, the right to be obeyed. It must be distinguished from power, which is the ability to compel compliance, either through use or threat of force” (Wolff 576).

       I remember when I was a child, maybe eight or nine years old, and still developing both mentally and physically. I had not yet come to be able to understand the sheer vastness of the community around me; neither of the society within which said community existed, nor of the world within which that society was but a small piece of. Lacking this basic element of a mere understanding of the ‘whole’ in which I operated, how possibly could I plan and execute actions which would result in a high degree of life-proficiency within it? The simple answer is that I could not; unless of course I had a source of reference for the world at large. This source of reference came to me in a rather non-unique form: the form of parents. My parents had sufficiently developed mental capacities which were more than capable of grasping the area of operations we humans call home and refer to as Earth, and they were therefore capable of directing my behaviour in an appropriate way. Parenthood is the pinnacle of authority, the child needs help making decisions because they are not yet aware enough of the world around them to make informed decisions about their life. Without the influence and direction of the parents the child would surely not survive, and thus: the parents of the child have a right to command the child and the child has a right to obey those commands. As is also supported by Jon Stuart Mill, “young persons below the age of manhood or womanhood[,] [t]hose who are still in a state to require being taken care of by others, must be protected against their own actions as well as against external injury” (Mill 599).

       Often times in childhood, following my biological imperative, I would choose to disobey the commands of my parents. Upon discovery I would be sent to my room as punishment, my parents commanded that I go there and I obeyed their command, for I respected their authority. One afternoon in particular I was commanded to go to my room and so I went, but I was not pleased about it. As I sat in there I began to think: ‘What exactly is keeping me in here? The door is not locked; my parents are not standing guard outside. Why do I stay if it does not please me?’ and so I opened my door, walked out of my room, out of the house, and right on down to the playground. I no longer respected the authority of my parents and thus freed myself from its bonds. It is questionable whether an authority void of the respect of the proletariat party still holds any true merit. For what right does one have to command, thereafter the supervised has waived his right to be commanded?

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself all on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing. (Mill 602)

To be alive is, by this definition, to possess such internal drive. Therefore to contradict an individual’s internal compulsions is to contradict life itself, and hence the concept of government is not only illogical yet also a clearly false premise. It is my, most firm, opinion that when I decided to waive my right to be commanded that my parents lost their right to command me. The only option they had left was “to compel [my] compliance, either through use or threat of force” (Wolff 576). Whether they did this or did not and also whether, if they did, it was effective is beyond the scope of my argument here.

       Governments do not have any legitimate authority whatsoever over any person, place, or thing. They hold great power in that they compel their subjects to obedience through threat of force (and excessive use). One must drive no faster than the posted speed, or else you will be financially reprimanded (financial reprimands being the modern day equivalent of lashings). One must not slander others, one must not tread where one is not expressly permitted, one must refrain from all acts of aggression, and one must not possess that which one does not own, all for fear that one will be incarcerated (one of the truest modern day forms of force). One must not rape, pillage or kill for fear of the same (incarceration) and, still in many areas of the world today, for fear of being slain in retribution (the death penalty would be the primary example here). All of these are examples of laws; a law is a technical term which describes the threat of force and, in the case the law is tested: use of force.

       Many people will voraciously argue that governments do hold authority. That its subjects, by choosing to live in any particular government’s dominion: agree to the government’s right to command and therefore agree to the right to be commanded by that government. This is close-minded and wishful thinking; it is such, for there is nowhere in this world that is truly anarchist. There is nowhere for anyone to live out their life should they waive their right to be commanded. For if it is simply by living within the dominion of a government that one agrees to be commanded by that government, then should one not agree to be commanded one would need to live where there is no government dominion, and there is no such a place! However subconsciously it may be occurring, governments across the globe conspire with each other to consistently place one hundred percent of the world’s population under government power (power which they claim as authority); such a grand conspiracy, whether realized or not by those whom employ it, is a true and total definition of force. The word ‘accept’ carries with it a strong connotation of choice in the matter. One is born into a government controlled dominion and anywhere one might go is also a government dominion and simply by being within a government dominion one is said to ‘accept’ that government’s right to command him. But can one truly ‘accept’ the right to be commanded when there is no choice in the matter? I will state this again for clarity and emphasis: governments do not have any legitimate authority whatsoever over any person, place, or thing. They hold great power in that they compel their subjects to obedience through threat of force (and excessive use). The only time any government will be able to claim anything more than purely tyrannical and brutish ‘power’ over its subjects, is when its subjects have a choice in the matter; when there is the option of a truly anarchist state.

Works Cited

Mill, John Stuart. “A Classic Liberal Answer: Government Must Promote Freedom”. Philosophy:

The Quest For Truth. Ed. Louis P. Pojman, Lewis Vaughn. 9th ed. New York. Oxford University              Press, 2014. 596-602. Print.

Wolff, Robert Paul. “In Defense of Anarchism”. Philosophy: The Quest For Truth. Ed. Louis P.

Pojman, Lewis Vaughn. 9th ed. New York. Oxford University Press, 2014. 575-579. Print.

The Time Is Now

Cyril C. House
Metaphysics
19/09/2015

The Time Is Now

       Time, the sensation of tense one seems to find oneself surrounded by. My birthday was last month, my mother’s birthday is next month, neither her birthday nor my birthday are happening now. You were late for class this morning, to be specific you were five and a half minutes late, unlike me, I was five and two thirds minutes early; whereas Fred arrived exactly on time. ‘Fred arrived exactly on time’: is this to say Fred perhaps mounted time and rode it here? Or is this to say that Fred’s penetration of the threshold, and time’s penetration of the threshold occurred simultaneously? Yet if either of these were the case, that would mean that time was not in the room before Fred arrived, which is illogical to presume. In the particular case of Fred it would likely be more proper to state that Fred crossed the threshold at the precise moment which Fred had previously agreed to cross the threshold upon. What then is this moment I speak of? It seems to be some very general measurement of a point in time. To measure something however, there must be a pre-existing thing what one will measure, this thing: time. What then is time, exclusive of the measurement of itself? What exactly is one measuring when one measures time? I am of a mind that what one is measuring when measuring time is the linear array of points-of-existence which the three-dimensional-world creates as is travels out into inexistence (inexistence being the nothingness which the Universe seems to expand out into). Time could be thought of as a fourth spatial dimension, in that it is a physical point of reference from the beginning of the Universe out to the point currently at which the Universe exists; just as width is a physical point of reference from the center of an object to its edges.

       John Ellis McTaggart is an important name in temporal philosophy ever since the release of his paper The Unreality of Time in 1908. McTaggart proposed two series’ of time: the A-Series and the B-Series. The A-Series refers to temporal references such as ‘I tripped upon that snake five minutes ago’, whereas the B-Series refers to temporal references such as ‘I tripped upon that snake before having said this’. The A-Series inherently refers to tensed time: past, present, future; the B-Series refers only to the events occurring within time and how these events relate to each other (Stanford). McTaggart goes on to suggest that time could not be real due to change being “essential to time, and the B series without the A series does not involve genuine change (since B series positions are forever [‘]fixed,[‘] whereas A series positions are constantly changing)” (Stanford). For example ‘my wedding is tomorrow’ becomes ‘my wedding was yesterday’. If my wedding is tomorrow this is to say that my wedding occurs after the present moment, and to say my wedding was yesterday implies that my wedding occurred before the present moment. So how can my wedding take place before and after the present moment? Thus one has, McTaggart proposes, a paradox.

       Bertrand Russelll seems to address the problem of the present in his own temporal philosophy, by eliminating it entirely. Russell proposes that the paradoxes inherent in temporal philosophy are due directly to the uncertain nature of the concept of present-ness, which is the moment of now, and to circumnavigate these paradoxes Russell coins his own temporal language to eliminate the present moment (Inwagen 77). This language looks something like this: ‘the moment at which I speak to you is the same moment at which I trip upon the snake’ or to be more directly non-present: ‘the moment at which I speak to you and the moment at which I trip upon the snake occur simultaneously’. Russell’s theory rejects the concepts of past, present, and future; it proposes then that there are only events which occur in a linear fashion and that any reference to time is simply a statement about the order in which events take place. So if there are only events which occur, and no stage upon which they occur, then what is it one has been measuring all these years with one’s clocks and calendars and dates and appointment books? Russell seems to think that one has been measuring the illusion of the differential of event-occurrences. This is preposterous however, as one may plainly see by way of a simple thought experiment. Imagine that there were no events, imagine that the physical world simply froze in place and all events ceased to occur. Would the ‘illusion’ of time then cease, alongside the cessation of the passage of events? No. Russell may rebut this experiment by claiming that the cessation of all events is itself an event and that one would therefore experience the illusion of its passage. I say no, and again appeal to a thought experiment: imagine there was never any events at all, imagine there is only a mind (your mind) and nothing else. Does ‘time’ still pass in this universe? It must for if time should not pass then neither would your thoughts, for your thoughts require moments in which to occur. Russell again may say that a mind being there is an event. Consider then the mind you inhabit is an observer outside of the universe of nothingness. Does time still pass?
     
       Think now upon what I have to suggest regarding the nature of time, and see that it is by far the most reasonable theory of the three here mentioned, and perhaps of a larger grouping as well. One tends to consider time as some sort of essence which pervades all existence and ‘has things happen’ as it were.

Figure 1.

When looking at a cube, see Figure 1, one experiences a three-dimensional object; the cube emits a perception of height, and one of width, and one of depth. Now, one contemplates said cube with said spatial properties existing in the same spot as it was created, and throughout the entirety of its existence does not so much as budge; yet one perceives a quaternary aspect of the cube due to the fact that the cube ‘continues to exist’, and this quaternary aspect is of a nature which is very difficult to define, although we have dubbed this perplexing phenomena Time. “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. Yet to explain it to him who asks, I do not know” (Augustine).  McTaggart proposed that time is unreal, and I am inclined to concur with this thesis, however ‘time is unreal’ is not to say that time is not real, but more so to say that time is not as real as most things which one would consider to be real in an objective sense of reality, such as the cube, or one’s desk, or oneself. If one were to push the cube six inches to the left, one would have a relatively simple time explaining exactly why the cube is different after having been moved than before having been moved, but with the stationary cube, movement through time, this is much more difficult to explain. I propose that time is in fact a dimension of spatial-reconciliation.

“In our expanding universe, galaxies rush away from one another like a dispersing mob. Any two galaxies recede at a speed proportional to the distance between them: a pair 500 million light-years apart separates twice as fast as one 250 million light-years apart. Therefore, all the galaxies we see must have started from the same place at the same time -- the big bang. The conclusion holds even though cosmic expansion has gone through periods of acceleration and deceleration” (Veneziano). 

Contemplate the precise moment the Big Bang banged, and imagine that the Big Bang banged-out a cube identical to Figure 1.

Figure 2.

       See now Figure 2 and picture the inner-cube (hereafter referred to as Cube-One) therein as the universe at the moment-of-bang, and picture the outer-cube (hereafter referred to as Cube-Two) as the Universe at the next moment after the moment-of-bang. Now forecast your thoughts to envision the Universe after 14.7 billion years, worth of moments, of cubes extending outwards like this. The further along the array one is to observe, this is the spatial-dimension what is time. For Cube-One contains height, width, and depth (hereafter referred to as HWD), as does Cube-Two. Yet Cube-One’s HWD are different than Cube-Two’s HWD; how so? Firstly, Cube-Two’s HWD are more expansive. Secondly, and more crucially indeed, is the fact that Cube-Two’s HWD are each themselves moved from where each was in regards to Cube-One; how did they move though? For height itself can move neither higher nor lower, nor may width itself move left or right, nor may depth itself move in or out; and furthermore height may not move along width, or width along depth, or depth along height, for that notion is simply non-sensible. So just how did HWD move? One again asks. HWD moved along time, I answer. For if again one is to refer to Figure 1, and imagine that this cube is sitting on your desk and not moving, and after one hour the cube is still there on your desk. Is the cube in the same spot though? No! In fact after an hour the cube is 515, 000 miles away from where one left it to begin with, and for that matter so are you, and so is the desk! In relation to one another the objects remain in the same locations, but from a more expansive perspective one will note that all these things are speeding away from the center of the Universe; the Milky Way retreats at approximately 515, 000 MPH (818, 000 KPH) (Space).

       Exclusive of the measurement of itself then, time is the distance outwards which any given point in the Universe has traveled since the moment-of-bang. In the equation T = dN - (oN + P), T is the degree of expansion of the Universe (referenced as Time), dN is the destination node of the Universe, being the point at which the Universe can no longer expand, oN is the origin node of the Universe, being the point at which the Big Bang banged, and P is the progress, at any given point, of the Universe on its outward trajectory from oN towards dN; also known as The Present. However, when one typically calculates time, one does not come up with a figure such as 14.7 billion years. One comes up with a figure such as 22:50, or 14:15. That is because humans have the need to speak relationally about time, and as a result have devised a system that chops any given moment out of the expansion of the Universe, and refers to it in relation to smaller and typically cosmic events, for example the rotation of the Earth on its own axis. Such a formula looks something like this P = oR + cR and T = P / 24 where P is progress calculated by origin of rotation (of Earth on its axis), plus current rotation, which is how far back towards oR the Earth has rotated. Then time is calculated by P divided by 24, which is a socially constructed number used to refer to ‘hours in a day’. A day is a reference to the Earth turning from oR around to oR, a full rotation. The reference is to how far outwards the Universe itself expands before Earth is able to rotate. Another commonly used reference is to the solar year. A solar year refers to the Earth travelling a full circle around the sun. While the Earth travels around the sun it is spinning on its axis and therefore cycling through days; the amount of time it takes for the Earth to travel around the sun is slightly in excess of three-hundred and sixty-five days, but for the sake of simplicity let us round down to a precise 365. So a solar year is calculated referentially: Y = D * 365 where Y is year(s) and D is day(s).

       Mostly when one is hearing about, or is speaking about, time it is in the context of these referential manipulations of the true concept. Time is an extremely useful and versatile phenomena which is so engrained in the lives and mindsets of human beings that it is hardly ever analyzed beyond what one implicitly understands about it, being the socially constructed designations of but a shadow of True Time. Cosmologists and Astrophysicists are only recently beginning to bring True Time to light in the eyes and minds of the public as they begin to explore what might happen as the mathematics of the Universe continue to expand. As these scientists simulate time expansion it becomes increasingly questionable exactly what the Universe is fated to become. There is a chance the mathematics will hold together and continue to expand the Universe, but there is an equally likely chance that the mathematics will invert upon themselves (NASA). Should the latter be the case it will cause time to start travelling backwards and if time is only the expansion of the Universe, then inverted time is a contraction of the Universe, hence the name for this theory of time reversal ‘The Big Crunch’.

Works Cited

“Create The Cube”. 2014. Blackberry. Blackberry Native SDK For Playbook OS. Web. 24/09/2015,               URL=                                                         https://developer.blackberry.com/playbook/native/documentation/tut_rotating_cube_opengl_projection_matrix_1935222_11.html                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Markosian, Ned. "Time", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition), Edward             N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/time/

NASA/WMAP Science Team. “Universe 101: Big Bang Theory”. National Aeronautics and Space            Administration. 29/06/2015. Web. 02/10/2015. URL =                                                                            http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_fate.html

Red, Nola Taylor. “Milky Way Galaxy: Facts about our Galactic Home”. Space.com, 2013. Web.              29/09/2015. URL= http://www.space.com/19915-milky-way-galaxy.html

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