Was Christ premature baby

Why do we have to do everything at the same time.
Why do we have to do shopping in supermarkets on weekends.
Why do we have to go to work at the same time.
Why do we need to have to celebrate Christmas at the same time, which is wrong anyway. Christ was not born on 25 of December, but on 1 January. If he had been born on 25 December, then the calendar would have started from that day, and 25 December would have become 1 of January (because our calendar is „before Christ, BC or after Christ, anno domini, AD”). Christ is a premature infant, because he was born before his birthdate.
But whenever Christ was born, Merry Christmas everyone.

Black King John

John Godson has become the first black member of Poland's lower house of parliament (Sejm). Other countries may look down on Poland, because they have had ethnic minority MPs for some time, but let me be honest with you. When I worked as an interpreter in the European Parliament, I did not see too many black or asian faces, not among the MPs, interpreters or journalists.

He represents the Civic Platform Centrist Party. The right wing ticket would perhaps be more difficult for him, he is a Pentacoastalist rather than Catholic. Although I can imagine that there are right wing constituents who would accept any coloured politician: black, yellow, red, Martian, provided he is not Jewish.

In some countries the locals fear immigration, but in Poland this does not seem to be such problem. As a country we are simply not attractive enough to mobile Blacks or Asians. If they are allowed into Festung Europe, they will quickly move to more prosperous parts.

But without immigration a country will simply wither. When all faces are white, the point of view quickly becomes parochial, the approach very introspective, when everybody speaks the same language (which no one else understands), people talk only to one another rather than to the world. Seems that the economy needs more and more people for wealth creation and funding future old-age pensions. Some economists recommend procreation (which may be environmentally unsustainable), but immigration would do just as well.

If Poland does not want to become Europe’s backwater, it needs more colourful people whose children would say at school “King John Sobieski, our ancestor”.

Quotes Without Context

„there are certain features of the bodily sensations especially, but also of certain peceptual experiences, which no amount of purely physical information includes. Tell me everything about physical there is to tell about what is going on in a living brain, their relation to what goes on at other times and in other brains, and so on and so forth, and be I as clever in fitting it all together, you won’t have told me about the hurtfulness of pains, the itchiness of itches, pangs of jealousy, and about the characteristic experience of tasting a lemon, smelling a rose, hearing a loud noise or seeing the sky.”
Frank Jackson
Epiphenomenal Qualia
In David J. Chalmers (ed.) Philosophy of Mind
Classical and contemporary readings (page 273)


„Suppose we tried to say that the redness or blueness of light was nothing but a specific wavelength of EM waves. Well, if we tried such an ontological reduction, the essential features of the light would be left out. No description of the extrinsic wavelenghts of EM waves could possibly convey the intrinsic character of (objective) visible redness and visible blueness for the simple reason that visible properties of light are distinct from the physical properties of EM waves. This argument is ludicrously simple and quite decisive.”
Paul M. Churchland
The Rediscovery of Light
In David J. Chalmers (ed.) Philosophy of Mind
Classical and contemporary readings (page 363)

Mass production of my beautiful self

Can brains be copied? Or more precisely, will we be able in some distant future to make copies of the information contained in our heads for some future use. I am sure top secret scientists are working on it and one day we will learn that the illuminating papers written on philosophy of mind were for some scholars only a front for some substantial undercover operation paid for by the military (mind uploading, whole brain emulation, mind transfer).
But we must not expect that one day we will be able to pack in our mindes and wake up in a different, possibly more superior bodies. Subjectivity cannot be copied, now or in the future, I think. Just imagine what happens if they make 100 copies of me. I would have to wake up in 100 bodies, if they put me into all of them. I would have to listen to a cacophony of thoughts, from different selves, less and reminding me and going their separate ways. Or if I wake up in one body, while should be this particular one, and no other. How to keep just one loudspeaker on, and turn off the remaining ones.
I better remain mortal.
Dualist without God.

Communism an an experimental group

Love it or hate it, from the scientific point of view communism was the biggest social experiment in history. Methodologically, it was also rather correct, because it was replicated in different societies, with different traditions and stage of development. It also had control as well as experimental groups, like East Germany and West Germany, South Korea and North. We never had such an experiment before or since. The conclusions from the experiment were also rather obvious, if you compare the standard of living in the control and experimental groups.

But it was probably a necessary experiment. Before communism what people knew was capitalism, with its cycles of booms and crises, every ten years. What a waste – said Marxists. Let’s organise the economy in a scientific, or at least rational way, without market anarchy, so that we do not have overproduction, oversupply and unemployment. We will not have those, because we will plan our raw materials and other resources, as well as jobs to avoid mismatch with our needs. In a rational economy there will also be no place for exploitation, war and poverty, because all the conflicts will be rationally regulated and resources rationally allocated.

Now, we know that this cannot be done. Certain things just cannot be planned. Planning and regulation stifle progress. But we needed experience to tell us that. Or did we?

But there is a snag. The cost of the social experiment. It has been argued that too many people died in the process. Too many hopes were thwarted and too many opportunities wasted. So let us better learn from the old experiment, because it is not going to be repeated any soon. Or is it?

Chicken or egg

I have always been fascinated by the so-called interdefinability sets which you find in dictionaries

(1) (a) „Green is the colour of grass”
(b) „Grass is a green plant”

(2) (a) „Red is the colour of blood”
(b) „Blood is a red liquid”

These are vicious circles found in real-life dictionaries. Teachers, especially logicians hate vicious circles, although many of them seem to think that everything must be defined, which leads to vicious circles, because you cannot define everything ad infinitum.
It looks as if vicious circles are quite ordinary. This may be an insult to those philosophers and linguists who think that all meaning should be derived from a final set of primitive concepts (lingua mentalis – Leibniz, Wierzbicka).
But it never occured to me until now that an intedefinability set can encapsulate a big part of the history of philosophy, namely the dispute between empiricists like Hume and Platonists.
Hume believed that all ideas came from experience. So he would think that we first see a green object like grass (impression) and then derive the concept of green from it (idea).
Plato might think that the concept of green is innate. When we see some object in the world we compare it with our set of innate features (like greenness) and define GRASS.
Make sense? There is no escaping from philosophy, even when compiling a dictionary.

Must be absurd to be true

Tertulian
(reputedly said "credo, quia absurdum" - I believe, because its absurd)

Many people, including myself are dualists, because they think it quite obvious that we have minds, thoughts and feelings and, moreover, private access to them. Private access means that I do not need to look into my brain or a brain scanner in order to know that I suffer. But there are those who argue that science is not about highlighting things which are evident.

On the contrary, it sometimes takes things which on first appearances are completely absurd, but after experiments they turn out quite well justified, presumably even true. Science seems to be Tertulianesque in this regard.

The Copernican revolution or Einstein’s claim that time is relative provide good examples of science’s changing things which are absurd into quite reasonable.
We main think materialism absurd, but so was the centrality of the Sun in the Solar system.

Some philosophers even think that dualist psychology shall one day be replaced with neuroscience and treated as folk psychology. We may simply be wrong in saying that we have thoughts and feelings.

I like this argument against dualism. But I do not think a case has been fully made for it. That sometimes science takes us by surprise is a fact, but it does not mean it will in every instance. Claiming so would be equivalent to very radical scepticism, or perhaps complete scepticism. Actually, it would mean that every proposition in which we believe is untrue and only waiting to be replaced by science. The sceptics of old may have deconstructed our whole world but stopped short of denying us our self (or selves). The twentieth century was not so timid, in the form of Freudianism and Analytic Philosophy, but abolishing an even imperfect self paves a road to madness, I think.

And finally, our phenomenology, our introspection provides us with data not theory. Such raw data we may wish to explain as quite a puzzling phenomenon, or cut aside with an Occam’s razor, if only for their notorious non-objectivity, privacy. But what we do not get from such self-examination is theory, which would explain something and compete with other theories, like neuroscience, for the same set of data. Our thoughts and feelings are raw data which may or may not need a theory to explain them. Maybe a little less reliable than we once thought, but data nevertheless.

Polish speaking Neanderthals

What do we know about the origin of language? The short answer is nothing? Which is funny, because when I went to University I thought that the origin of language had already been explained and should have been easy peasy. After all, the much more diffucult task of deriving man from monkey proved a non-brainer.

But there is a difference. There are no fossils of nouns and verbs. So discovering the past of our language must be based on guesswork.

A recent discussion on Melvyn Bragg’s „In our time” summarises recent findings (conjectures) about the language of our ancestors.

It seems that even Neanderthals had language or its rudiments. First, in order to kill a massive, dangerous animal like a mammoth you needed an organised group of 20, 30 possibly 40 people and this required relatively sophisticated communication skills.

Secondly there is this business of the FOXP2 gene, which has been called the language gene, but the story is more controversial. Simon Conway Morris,
Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the University of Cambridge says „What we know is that when FOXP2 mutates or mulfunctions, it interferes with language production in modern people. It’s been called the language gene, but actually it does many other things. It certainly is not going to be the only component of language. The fact that they’ve got it and we’ve got it means that it has been there in our common ancestor 500 thousand years ago. So I think we have to grant them (Neanderthals) basic language abilities.”

Thirdly, „people have tried to reconstruct the Neanderthals’ vocal tracts, to see what sounds they could make, but even on the worst case scenario they’ve got 25 or 30 percent of the range of sounds we can make and for modern humans this is completely adequte to make complex communication. But I doubt if they had the complexity of language we are using now” .

Melvyn Bragg: „But we did not have back then the complexity of language we are using now”.

Simon Conway Morris: „Well, there is evidence from Africa that modern humans were communicating in more complex way probably 100 thousand years ago. We start to see the beginning of complexity there, which we do not find at that time in Neandertals. They do get more complex at the end of their time, but at that time there is a gap beginning to open up – in my view - of complexity of communication and symbolism”.

Chris Stringer, Research Leader in Human Origins at the Natural History Muse hints that before the Neandertals were completely gone, they might have started to imitate the way of life of modern humans they were in contact with (both races rubbed shoulders for a while). Could they have started to imitate their language?

We have a collection of phantasy stories in Polish. Jakub Wędrowycz, Poland’s answer to Doctor Who fights not the Daleks, but a tribe of Neanderthals, who survived in hiding on the Polish-Ukrainian borderland and even learned Polish (or possibly cyrilic). So even this might be possible. Just!

(stories about Jakub Wendrowycz are written by Andrzej Pilipiuk. The particular story about the Neanderthals is called „The Russian Rulette”. I do not know if an English translation exists)

Dura lex sed lex

1. Lawyers actually like this principle. They seem to treat it as the cornerstone of the rule of law. No matter what you privately think about certain regulations you are obliged to uphold them. Privately you might think, as many do, that cannabis is OK, but as a policeman you are obliged to arrest people for selling cannabis, or perhaps (I am not sure about the details) even for possessing large quantities of it.
Mind you, you have uphold a law which you think is immoral or simply impractical, even if you are a judge. You need to be objective, your private views must not cloud your judgment. Cruel law but law – said the Romans, and we still think the Romans are right.
In fact, only the legislators are allowed to have doubts and actually change the law they consider immoral. Personally, I find it surprising, because politicians usually have no morals.
2. On the other hand, we are not immediately forgiving, if a war criminal says: “I had to kill people at Katyn (Auschwitz), because I needed to follow orders. Orders are law in war, and not all of them are legally questionable, because the first thing dictators or cruel, angry mob do is to introduce a law of their own.
So we have a philosophical paradox, if there ever was one. Cruel law but law nevertheless. This may as well be true. But does it give you the license to be cruel.

What is the symbol of modern philosophy? One symbol could be Turing’s apple, which cannot be fully eaten and only a bite can be chewed at terminal cost. Kind of a mix between Newton’s apple and Socrates’ hemlock. A cyanide coated apple allegedly was the cause of Turing’s suicide/fatal accident/murder Here is a quotation from the recent book about Alan Turing, the eccentric mathematical genius who was the Man who Knew Too Much, and who got into trouble for his homosexuality in England of the fifties and might have possibly been put down by the powers that be. A shameful story indeed. Read Leavitt’s book;

“Today the apple continues to fascinate. Much is made of its metaphorical implications. (Apple of death, apple of knowledge - but too much knowledge?) A rumour circulates on the Internet that the apple is the logo of Apple Computers is meant as a nod to Turing? The company denies any connection; on the contrary it insists that its apple alludes to Newton. But then why has a bite been taken out?"

Stranded and grounded in London

Am I angry? By no means! I had the best time of my life. With modest accommodation in Northern London, surrounded by friends, I could stay on not just for six additional days, but for several months. To be honest with you I am quite disappointed this did not happen. But I still avoided a week of hard work back at home and my son was late for school. I could retaste a life with few responsibilities and my son had his first tast of freedom from School and Mother.

Was there a danger? Depends who you talk to. Politicians do not have a clue, but cannot afford even a single plane falling off the sky, so they need to listen to scientists. But scientists were quite adamant: volcanic ashes are a nasty thing and can blunt a jet engine.

But we also know that in addition to standard methodology of science they also employ the precautionary principle, which is fairly conservative and also political (it is a statutory requirement in EU law). Unlike in a court of law, it does not give an accused technology the benefit of a doubt. Planes must be grounded if there a danger is suspected, but it is not yet scientifically proven. The cost is not an object.

And it is difficult to fully trust the scientist after the Year 2000 IT fiasco. Back then computers were supposed to stop because of internal clock and date problems, unless lots of money be spent on fixing the issues. So said the scientists, or at least specialists. Some countries spent a lot, some precious nothing, but no country experienced even mild tremours. This is somehow hard to forget.

Racism

Nowadays racism seems a big mistake. Anthropologists will tell you that there are no races. And even if there are races (in the sense of colours of skin differences certainly exist), they are, like beauty, merely skin deep. So the racists of the past: slave-owners, Nazis, managers of exclusive clubs seem not just cruel criminals, but people of crass stupidity.
But the situation is slightly artificial. We are the only intelligent race to speak about. All other beings are not just inferior, they are in a completely different league. Nobody would claim that apes could even touch us in any intellectual effort. Certainly not Chomsky.
But this has not always been so. We had to share the earth with other human animals, probably inferior, but only just. There were our younger brethren, the Neanderthals, but also from a different race. If our apelike ancestors could have done philosophy, the discussion on racism would have been more interesting. It would not be on whether racism was scientifically wrong, because it was not back then. The Neanderthals were family, but not our equals. The discussion would be how to treat people who were genuinely racially inferior. Members of our family they might have been, albeit a little slow. Should we protect them, because they were a little foolish, or exploit them for the same reason, or put them out of their misery as soon as possible.
I think that that the third alternative was finally chosen.

Mind, God and immortality

On my Polish blog I wrote about the difference between the old philosophising about the soul and modern mind/body problem. The concept of the soul appears in inquiries about human immortality, while the concept of more or less non-material mind is to explain an equally puzzling miracle of private access to our minds, introspection, etc. Our minds need not be immortal, while the concept of soul more often than not implies immortality. While we have direct access to our minds, Cicero thinks that we do not have direct access to our souls. We can learn about them indirectly, the same as we learn about God.

That our inquiries about the human mind bear few consequences for the issue of our immortality is shown by the following quotation from Hume. Hume starts with the panpsychism of the stoics (which nowadays seems to be restored by David Chalmers, who thinks that consciousness is more dispersed in the world than usually expected).

“…admitting a spiritual substance to be dispersed throughout the universe, like ethereal fire or the Stoics and to be the only inherent subject of the thought, we have reason to conclude from analogy that nature uses it after the manner she does the other substance, matter. She employs it as a kind or paste or clay; modifies it into a variety of forms and existences; dissolves after a time each modification and from its substance erects a new form. As the same material substance may successively compose the bodies of all animals, the same spiritual substance may compose their minds. Their consciousness or the system of thought, which they form during life, may be continually dissolved by death. And nothing interests them in the new modification. The most positive asserters of mortality of the soul never denied the immortality of its substance. And that an immaterial substance, as well as material may lose its memory or consciousness appears, in part, from experience, if the soul be immaterial”.

David Hume Of the Immortality of the Soul (page one or two)


Let me put very simply: you do not need to believe in God or immortality to be a dualist.

Selfish economist and altruistic animal

(W.D.Hamilton)





There seems to be an obvious parallel between darwinism and classical market economy. Both are about survival of the fittest in the face of fierce competition. One is about the evolution of species, while the other is about the rise and decline of enterprises in the market place. But the principle of competition seems to underlie both.

But this is wrong. According to Adam Smith the economic agent is basically egoistic, but the egoism of mutually competing enterprises can lead to socially responsible results. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest”.

Not so darwinism, at least according to some of its interpretations, like Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" and D.W. Hamilton. People and other animals can and do behave altruistically. Where the real evolutionary fight goes on is the level of genes. The latter certainly do not care for anything other than themselves.

So, on the one hand we have A.Smith, who starts from egoistic premises but ends with non-egoistical conclusions and some darwinist biologists who start with altruistic premises but end with non-altruistic conclusions. Looks like swapping places, doesn't it?

Mad to Red

Your science may impeccable, but you will not be trusted, because you have a dubious political agenda. This is the attitude taken towards environmentalists by Justin Rowland in the BBC's Analysis broadcast on 25.01.2010.

He came to the conclusion that cutting carbon emissions is not the top priority for all green campaigners, that certain political objectives seem to overshadow their interest in fighting global warming.

Environmentalists do not just want to change the world, they want to change poeple, change their hearts and attitudes. They do not trust technology and indeed some of the motivation for the precautionary principle (which has very conservative consequences) may result from technophobia. Their opposition to the idea of unrelentless growth may lead them to certain postulates of romantic lifestyle, in order to make our society less unhappy and more fulfilling. Finally, some of them tend to oppose unconstrained free market economy, very individualistic, with high levels of consumption, everybody out for themselves, etc. Perhaps some kind of socialism is in the horizon, although many are willing to admit that socialist societies were among the heavist polluters. But is China socialist or capitalist, I got confused?

This is how far you can go starting from the premise that carbon is noxious, resources are scarce and technology is hazardous. You start as a climatologist and end up as political philosopher (you may have been one from the start). But after all your motivation is not important for your scientific argument, if you are right. You may even join the environmental movement for fun, but if your climate change predictions are accurate, we better listen to you.

See you

Marek

Damned if you, damned if you don't

Global warming scientists often complain: we have all the calculations, verifiable or falsifiable science, peer-reviewed of course, why don’t you listen to us, you politicians, you Joe Publics. Indeed, it’s very sad. It is disgraceful that the politician should decide what is sound science and what is not.

But once bitten, twice shy. This year marks the anniversary of the final exposure of the Millennium bug fiasco. What was the Millennium bug? In the words of Stephen Fry: ”All computers have internal clocks and calendars and the first programmers cut corners by expressing the date just in two digits. “73” instead of “1973” and so on. It was thought that the date “00” might be interpreted by older, uncorrected computers as 1900 not 2000. In other words, on the dot of midnight, New Year’s Eve 2000, the Internet would think that it is 1900 again and turn into a pumpkin. The party would be truly pooped, unless we lavished billions on it”.

And we did. Governments spent lots of money to fix the bug. Special projects were created. But the countries which did little or nothing (Korea, Italy, Turkey) did not have any bigger problems than the countries which overspent (like Clinton’s USA).

So if the precautionary principle is a valid one, perhaps it says that one should be cautious about the predictions of scientists who often cry wolf. But equally we should look into the facts of science (if we can understand them, because they are presented by intelligent people. We are in a cleft stick.

Marco (on a very snowy day in Warsaw)