Purpose

The other day I was chatting with a friend when the subject of purpose of life in general and that of one's life in particular came up. After a bit of thinking about it my friend declared that the purpose of life is "to find the purpose of life." That immediately sounded paradoxical to me, but I could not quite show why. But, it just occurred to me today what was wrong with that statement.

If purpose of life were to find purpose of life, then either one will never fulfill that purpose and thus live purposelessly, or will eventually be without a purpose. In either case one's life would be without a purpose.

Another way to look at is to say that if a person makes that statement - purpose of my life is to find purpose of my life - he or she indirectly also states that he or she knows the purpose of his or her life - so what is there to look for, thus the statement makes no sense.

chinese room

The other day I got interested again in the issues of mind-body connection or interface and so I went to Wikipedia to see what people have to say about it. I read the post and got intrigued by the Chinese Room experiment.

Reading that post reminded me of how it seems almost inevitable that we restrict our thinking to within a certain world view and thus limit ourselves. For example, the article has the following on the "Brain replacement scenario:"

Brain replacement scenario. In this, we are asked to imagine that engineers have invented a tiny computer that simulates the action of an individual neuron. What would happen if we replaced one neuron at a time? Replacing one would clearly do nothing to change conscious awareness. Replacing all of them would create a digital computer that simulates a brain. If Searle is right, then conscious awareness must disappear during the procedure (either gradually or all at once).

The paragraph illustrates the problem on multiple points. The first sentence assumes that all actions of neurons are knowable and thus potentially reproducible by a computing machine. Thus the whole paragraph is now based on false or incomplete premise or at least one which can not be proven true or false.

Then in the third sentence (one right after the question) the author offers a statement as an established truth, which in fact is rather another assumption at best. The following statement contains yet another questionable assertion.

What concerns me is not so much the fallacy of the mental exercise, which, the exercise, does have value on its own, though, but rather the fact that often, based on those musings of various scientists or philosophers, technologies are developed which are used to consciously impact some aspect of daily life. If this is done with full understanding of the limitations of the theories, fine - we can possibly prepare properly for eventualities. Otherwise, such blind application of theories which incorporate fallacious thinking leads to uncharted territories with potentially disastrous consequences.

intelligent design

The other day I listened to yet another debate on the radio about the "intelligent design" vs evolution. Regardless of what I think about the issue (I will write about that separately at some point), I am amazed how the "creationists" are not very effective in responding to the "fossils" argument offered so often by the "evolutionists."

It should be simple to say that, since the "creator" created the world and humans in it, the "creator" also created the fossils. I mean, if you believe in the notion that a "creator" created it all, why could that not also include the fossils?

primaries

Various thoughts race through by always-busy mind. It's about the NH primaries yesterday and election in general, more about evolution/creation, music I listen to, and, of course, always the immortal dance of tango.

NH primaries. I wonder what it is a testimony of that the pundits talk about the "come back kid" or the Iowa-momentum. Or they talk about too short of a time between Iowa causes and NH primaries so voters do not have enough time to "re-think" their votes. They talk about such-and-such candidate loosing/gaining ground. Everyone talks about "change," " experience," and such. All very generic stuff. I think all of that is a testimony of the inadequacies of the US electoral system.

I can understand how vote-casting calculus works and why the results of a previous primary/caucus election in the same election cycle would influence my vote. I suppose, if, by some reasoning (and here the media play a very crucial role) "my candidate" has no or very little chance of the overall win or some similar important role, I'd better switch my vote to the candidate who has the chance of winning, even if he or she is not "my candidate." That way I would make it almost certain that "my candidate" does not win.

I suppose you can argue that on some level it actually makes sense because in the process the candidate who is the best for most people eventually bubbles up on top.

But, why not have all the primaries on the same day and vote for two candidates - the most and the next most preferred one. I would prefer that in order to cut out the "pundits" effect.

I will leave the others thoughts of the day to other posts.