Infinite Regression

There is a problem that philosophers face while contemplating the origins of the universe. Anything that occurs must have an preceding event that caused the occurrence. Plato theorized that there must have been something at the beginning of time that existed without being caused to exist, and that thing could easily be described as God. According to my instructor, Professor Hilton, Plato came to the conclusion that if you could regress infinitely through events and causes, you will never come to a starting point; because a starting point wouldn’t exists. Plato theorized that nothing can exist without a starting point, thus the pattern of causes and effects are not infinitely regressable. Although I am not educated enough to seriously criticize Plato, what I just described seems like false reasoning. I am not yet convinced that there must be an ultimate causeless starting point.

What I suggest is that there is a sort of infinite regression, but rather than regressing back to negative infinitely, we regress back to near zero. Like a calculus equation which gets infinitely closer to zero without quite getting there, we can infinitely trace the causes of the big bang back to near-zero without quite getting to zero. This sort of thinking allows us to have our cake and eat it too. We regress infinitely, but we still have a starting point; an ultimate zero which we know is there but can never quite reach. Of course, convenience isn’t a valid reason to believe something, but for now, this is my theory and I’m sticking to it.

Thoughts about Free Will

In PHI 101, we recently discussed free choice. At about the same time, my student success skills course (which, at my age I didn’t really need but it was a requirement ), presented a chapter on discrimination and included a section on how environment affects behavior.

Clearly, with enough influence, a person’s behavior can be severely altered. People can be driven crazy by rabies, and we don’t expect rabies victims to overcome their negative influences and remain productive members of society. Similarly, we know that poor education and an hostile environment affect people’s behavior, but the phrase “Your mama didn’t raise you right” is an insult, not call for empathy. But if we accept that fact that a child’s environment determines the person who that child becomes, than we should have empathy for that person, no matter how unsavory that person turns out to be. This empathy is based on the realization that who we are is determined by an environment which is beyond our control (including internal factors such as brain chemistry). Variations of this idea are given names like determinism, the idea that all outcomes, including human choices, are determined by previous events, and materialism, the idea that our minds are just objects, subject to the same cycles of actions and reactions that any object is subject to.

Arguments against the idea that our choices are a result of influences beyond our control are often based on false pragmatism. If people don’t have free choice, then punishment is unfair and in order to be fair we should unlock all the prisons. That’s hardly pragmatic, therefore, some say, we must believe in free choice. Nobody wants to keep people locked up while also believing that people don’t really have free choice. But the fact that an idea is unpalatable doesn’t make it false. Also, the fact that a choice is unpalatable doesn’t make it wrong. A more pragmatic view of justice is that we punish criminals to prevent recurrence of bad behavior. It’s a necessary action. We can do so even while feeling empathy for the offender; even while believing that his choice to offend and our choice to keep him from offending again, are all guided by forces beyond our control. People can have empathy for criminals while also considering empathy for possible victims. This balance can lead to a pragmatic decision to enforce even the harshest of penalties.

My wife says this is a moot point. She asks, “if you choose to punish someone, just as severely as you would had you no empathy, what difference does it make if deep down inside you have empathy for that person?” The difference is empathy allows me to consider other options, when available. Someone who believes that we are all fully responsible for our choices looks at the high crime rate in bad neighborhoods and doesn’t believe the neighborhoods have any bearing on people’s choices. Thus, the solution is to build more prisons and electric chairs rather than change the neighborhoods so they stop producing so many criminals. But social programs are effective at reducing crime. Here, it is not empathy that prevents pragmatism, it’s a lack of empathy that does so.

Empathy for offensive people is just one pitfall in considering the external influences on our choices. Another is a feeling of hopelessness. If we have no free choice, then why bother getting up in the morning? But whether or not we actually have free will, it certainly seems like we do and we know that the choices we make, be they predetermined or not, will have certain results. If I am caught in a trap, I will try to break free rather than accept the fate that my death in the trap is predetermined. Similarly, I will assist someone else who may be caught in the trap. I don’t know what our fate is, so I will work for the best outcome. It seems somewhat contradictory, as if I’m just acting in a play that has been written by someone else, but to me the play seems real and so I will act as well as I possibly can.

The Illusion Inside

I haven’t read about how a face recognition system works, but I can take what I know about computers and guess that it scans a picture and records areas where certain pixels are a different shade from adjacent pixels and records those areas of changes, which can be called “contours”. It stores the locations of contours in a list of numbers which can be called a “table”. The part of the machine which is turning pictures into tables sends that data to another part which compares that table with other tables in a database. Each comparison produces a number, representing how well one table matches another. If the comparison is higher than a certain setting, the system indicates a match.

At no point in that process was there an entity which recognized a face. Just contours, represented as numbers, compared to other numbers. To this system I can attach an arm, which, like a plant turning towards the sun, turns in the direction of a certain face. If I put a gun at the end of that arm, I will have invented a terminator. This terminator could walk around, looking for a certain target, and kill that target upon finding it.

And at no point will the terminator have any idea what it’s doing. In fact, I can put a camera at the end of that arm instead of a gun, and suddenly a machine which seemed to be aggressive to my target, now seems to be enamored by it. But of course, the machine doesn’t love, hate, or even know the target.

I can give my terminator sensors which indicate a low battery. These sensors can trigger an override circuit so that the terminator stops looking for a target and instead starts looking for a power outlet. It doesn’t feel hunger; there’s nobody there to feel it.

You get the idea. It’s conceivable that an extraordinarily complex system can act like something with motivation without actually having motivation. A plant turns towards the sun because light effects cells on the plant’s stem and the difference between exposed areas and unexposed areas cause the stem to bend. If a system can operate without motivation, why are we here inside our bodies? It’s conceivable that our bodies can do fine without us.

Thus, various philosophers have denied the idea of a “self”. Gilbert Ryle famously denied the existence of a “ghost in the machine” necessary to make the machine work (I know, I thought Sting came up with the phrase too). Living Issues in Philosophy, the textbook that I’m using, also describes the Buddha as a self-denier ( If you didn’t read the previous post you might think, based on my wonderful writing, that I’m a philosophical genius. But in fact I’m just a student).

According to the book, both Ryle and the Buddha make similes comparing the self as different systems coming together to form the illusion of a single entity. Ryle described a student who, after touring the buildings and facilities of a university campus, wondered where the actual university was. The Buddha described a chariot as collection of wheels, axles, a cab, etc… there is no chariot, just parts.

But, even if my individual self is just an illusion created from different parts, that illusion is still something which exists. Descartes would agree. And if there is no such illusion inside my terminator, why is there such an illusion inside of me? That, I believe is the fundamental question of who we are.

A Blog Reborn

A while ago I launched “Benjamin’s Real Man Poetry Blog”, so named to allow me to share my literary genius while deflecting accusations of being a pansy. Unfortunately, my poetic well seems to have run dry, and my last poem was a gasping attempt at defining the unfortunate situation.

Since then, I began a philosophy course under the direction of philosopher Thomas Hilton. Although I’ve only been taking philosophy for about six weeks now, I think I’m about ready to become the grand-master of my own cult. The first step towards that goal is schooling the world on how the universe was created, the purpose of human existence, and why I should be your leader. As this poetry blog seemed to be crying out for new life, I decided to use it as my primary tool.

The blog will now be called “BnmnG Poetry and Philosophy”. I left “poetry” in place because those creative juices may start flowing again and because I realize the whole grand-master thing might not work out. I deleted “real man” to allow me to share my philosophic genius while deflecting accusations of being a pig. And I decided to replace “Benjamin” with my world famous handle, BnmnG, which, by the way, is not pronounced “bunnemminnig” as I’ve heard in local circles; it’s “beeyennemmenjee”; stands for Benjamin (no middle name) Goldberg.

This might be a fair time to mention that Professor Hilton gives extra credit to students who keep a journal, and I’m hoping this blog could be worth a few points. So while grandmastership might be nice, I’ll be happy with a few points added to my final grade.

So I started the poetry blog to show the world what a great poet I am, and turned it into a philosophy blog for a few points towards a class that I’m only taking as a breadth requirement. Gosh I’m deep.

But hopefully not too deep. Get ready folks, real heavy stuff is on the way.