The God from the Machine: Searching for the Ultimate Secret of Life

                For all of humankind’s progress in developing a scientific understanding of life, our efforts seem surprisingly limited when we consider the questions we haven’t yet answered.  Even concerning humans ourselves, we still have not cracked the code of the most integral aspect of who we are – our own conscious experiences.  We may have an excellent physiological understanding of how our bodies work, and even a growing understanding of how our brains work to allow us to function as intelligent beings, but the mechanism that allows us to truly experience and feel the world around us, as opposed to being like, say, a machine that imitates true awareness and emotions while really being nothing more than an inanimate object, is still a mystery.  The film Ex Machina tackles this mystery head on by seeking to answer how a conscious being might be identified from a machine imitating one.  If this is ultimately possible, then it would be the first step in identifying where consciousness arises from.  However, as the film suggests, no one test can give a clear cut answer. 

            Ex Machina presents itself as a modern Frankenstein tale.  A brilliant and complex scientist isolates himself from society and focuses on the singular task of creating a living being from scratch.  But, unlike in Frankenstein, the scientist, Nathan, has created an artificial intelligence and housed it in the body of a mechanical woman, Ava.  Also, unlike Frankenstein, a novel which raises questions about the consequences of creating intelligent life (Shelley), the film asks if creating intelligent life is even possible in the first place.  Nathan selects an employee from his company, Caleb, to come to his remote Alaskan compound to help him evaluate if Ava truly has consciousness or just an imitation of it.  He tells Caleb that he will be using the Turing Test with her, a theoretical test in which artificial intelligence is successfully achieved if a person observing its speech cannot tell that it is really a machine. Caleb will take the test a step farther, by seeing if he can determine her to be not only intelligent, but also conscious (Ex Machina).   

            This premise sets up for an intricate exploration of different ways that one might be able to determine whether something has consciousness or not.  One of the most intriguing things about Ava is thatNathan designs her brain using “wetware”.  Essentially, instead of her control center being made from wires and computer chips, it is composed of a sort of gel that imitates our more fluid and complex brains.  If we assume that our consciousness arises somehow from the matter in our brains, then it would seem that something with a similar structure may be able to produce it as well for an artificial intelligence.  Also, Ava does pass Nathan’s test, in a way.  She is so convincing to Caleb that he agrees to help her escape from the compound before Nathan shuts her down.  At this point Nathan reveals that his real test all along was to see if Ava could do just that, to use Caleb to find a way to escape.  This suggests consciousness in a several ways.  First, she exhibits strong motivation to preserve her wellbeing.  Second, her escape requires complex problem solving skills.  And third, Caleb truly believes that she’s a conscious being, which is essentially a passing of the Turing Test.  However, the twist at the end is that not only does she kill Nathan once she’s given the opportunity to escape, but she also leaves Caleb locked in a room in the compound where he seemingly could be trapped until he dies (Ex Machina).  This calls into question whether Ava has any sense of morals or real understanding of the suffering of others, things that should come natural if she is conscious.

            Ultimately, the film leaves the question of whether Ava has consciousness up for speculation.  You can watch the movie over and over, analyzing each of her actions and minutest behaviors, but there’s not meant to be a satisfactory answer.  This in part is good screenwriting, as it leaves much for thought and discussion, but it also makes the suggestion that determining consciousness is not as simple any single test.  This is where the film succeeds philosophically, because there is no possible way we can know if something has consciousness, at least with our current scientific understanding.  In fact, even if Ava had seemed completely human-like, it would still be impossible to determine if it wasn’t just her synthetic brain perfectly adopting and imitating the characteristics of a conscious human.  This is because we don’t know the physical basis for where consciousness stems from.  We assume that it is produced somehow by the connections in our brain, but still when we observe the brain, it appears no more than a physical lump of neurons, whereas our consciousnesses we know only as things that seem to transcend physical explanation, much like a “soul”.  Until we bridge this gap, which we are nowhere near doing, consciousness will be no more than an elusive concept and we cannot know if any artificial intelligence truly has it. 

            Many of the secrets of life are still completely unknown to humans, and we will likely spend all of our existence figuring them out.  In fact, the one most integral to who we are as living beings is also one of the most mysterious.  The term “deus ex machina” is latin for “god from the machine” and is commonly used to describe a plot device in which a sudden, unexpected event is used to conveniently resolve a complex situation.  The film Ex Machina suggests that there is no dues-ex-machina-like convenient solution to the problem of consciousness. Instead it implies that it is a highly complex conundrum which cannot currently be resolved with any single test.  Until we can develop a physical understanding of consciousness it will seem to us no more than a god-like entity arising from the machines of our brains.                                                       

Works Cited

Ex Machina. Dir. Alex Garland. Universal Studios, 2015. DVD.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, and Jones, 1818. The Project Gutenberg. Web. 2015. 

Bridging the Gap: Reflections on PHIL 307i

            When deciding what courses to take for this past semester, my choice to take “PHIL 307i: Philosophy of Science, Nature, and Technology” was a no-brainer.  For one thing, it would satisfy both a core curriculum requirement for humanities and a requirement for my environmental studies minor.  But, beyond that, it was a course that seemed would be uniquely rewarding for my educational experience.  Part of the reason I decided to go into the field of science, majoring in biological sciences and specializing in ecology, was to help out with the goal of better understanding the world around us.  To me, science and philosophy are both essential pillars of this task.  The only difference is that one uses empirical evidence to make predictions about the nature of things in the world, while the other works where empirical evidence cannot be used to fully solve a problem.  For this reason, though I’m a science major, my goal has been to get an effective background in philosophy as well.  This course in particular not only offered an opportunity to learn about some particular areas of philosophy, but also focused its attention on philosophy related to the disciplines that will directly be in my line of work, science and the study of nature.  My thought was that this course would help bridge the gap for me between science and philosophy by providing a philosophical perspective on science, and I’m happy to say that it did this for the most part, although not always in the ways I would have expected.                  

            The structure of the course, although different from any I had taken before, was particularly helpful in facilitating my learning process.  This structure primarily involved lectures, class discussions, and regular blog entries exploring the themes discussed in class.  The blog entries I found more enjoyable that the formal papers I’m used to writing for most classes like this, and these allowed me to regularly reflect on the topics we had been learning about, without the work being too rigorous.  There was also a fair amount of reading that was assigned, which was the most challenging part of the course for me, as it was difficult to find time to both keep up with the reading and work on the next blog entry.  However, I was generally still able to pick out the most important parts of the readings for use in my blog entries, so this was not a huge issue.     

            The content of the course was also not quite what I expected.  A philosophy of science class, I assumed, would focus on scientific method and theory, ethics of scientific practices, and other things specifically related to science.  Although these things were part of the content presented, the course seemed instead to use science and technology as devices to aid in a larger exploration of the nature of reality and life.  I particularly enjoyed the exploration of the nature of change and creation in the universe that was discussed throughout the course.  The debate over the degree to which the universe can experience real change was an issue I had not really thought of directly before.  Reading about Parmenides’ position that “being is one” and Spinoza’s view on God or Nature, both of which outline a deterministic universe where the only things that can exist are what already exists in some form within the singular entity of the universe (Mcdermott 62; Nadler), helped build my own view on the issue.  I also greatly enjoyed our study of two excellent works of fiction, the novel Frankenstein and the film Ex Machina.  These both explored the repercussions of humans creating life, as well as the question of what it even means for something to be “alive” (Ex Machina; Shelley).  The only topic I found a bit less engaging was our study of magic and occult philosophy.  The philosophers discussed here, including Giordano Bruno, Alistair Crowley, and Randal Auxier, offered an insightful perspective on reality and life, however this topic deviated a little too much from the scientific side of things for me, and seemed to take up much of the middle portion of the semester.  Despite this and the other reasons why the content of the course wasn’t quite what I expected, the course still proved to be very insightful to me.  Rather than looking specifically at the nature of science, it was enlightening in that it helped build a framework for a philosophical perspective on the things I will actually be studying in my career: life and the world around us.  This, as I said, is just as important as the scientific perspective. 

            Overall, PHIL 307i was a very good course and a positive experience.  Though I would have liked to spend more time studying the philosophical works discussed in class in more depth, and this certainly would have helped my grade, I also think I performed well in the course.  Most importantly though, the course helped form for me what I was initially hoping for, a bridge between the worlds of science and philosophy, which will give me an important perspective going forward as I begin my career as a biologist.                               

Works Cited

Ex Machina. Dir. Alex Garland. Universal Studios, 2015. DVD.

McDermott, John J. A Cultural Introduction to Philosophy. New York: Knopf, 1985. Print.

Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

Nadler, Steven. "Baruch Spinoza." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. N.p., 2013. Web. Nov.-Dec. 2015.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, and Jones, 1818. The Project Gutenberg. Web. 2015.

            

The Paradox of Creation

            In the beginning there were myths and stories, of how the world was molded by some all-powerful beings.  Out of these myths came formal religions that taught strict interpretations of how it all began.  Finally, as the world entered into the age of science and rational thought, highly technical and evidence-based theories predicted how the universe might have began from a single point.  Though the answers we’ve come up with may vary greatly, what’s for certain is that humans have always felt the need to answer this particular existential question: How did everything begin?  It’s so easy to imagine the story of the universe like a book or a movie.  There has to be a particular beginning, as well as an underlying purpose or narrative.  But real answers may require us to think beyond our normal conceptions of what a story can be to figure out the story of the universe.     

            Let’s consider. Science has been extremely valuable in explaining the laws of nature and our place in the universe.  It’s based on rational thought and empirical evidence, so it’s typically the ideal way of going about figuring out why things are the way they are.  The conventional and mostly undisputed belief among scientists these days is that the universe as we know it began with a sudden expansion known as the big bang.  This makes sense because the universe has been observed to be expanding, so logically at some time this began from a single point.  But this doesn’t really answer the question.  If the universe began with an expansion that produced all matter, energy, space, and time, then what existed before this event that allowed it to take place?  If there existed complete nothingness, then this creates a paradox, because how can something be produced from absolutely nothing?  And if there was some existing framework that allowed the big bang to take place, then the universe didn’t really begin with the big bang.  In other words, science, at least for now, is limited in understanding how the universe began.      

            To get closer to the answer we seek, we must turn to the realm of philosophy, which, though less reliant on empirical evidence, still depends on rationality and logic.  One philosopher that offers an important perspective on the matter is 17^th century thinker Baruch Spinoza.  Spinoza offered a revolutionary view of what to him was God.  He proposed that God was not so much a human-like being, but rather the totality of everything in existence.  Everything that exists exists within God, and, importantly, nothing can exist outside of God (because how could something exist that’s not already included in “everything in existence”?).  If we simply think of Spinoza’s God as the idea of “nature”, then this seems like an obvious observation.  But what this idea also implies is that what exists in nature, will always be what exists in nature; nothing new can come in and nothing can leave (Nadler).  Much like Greek philosopher Parmenides’ doctrine the “being is one” (Mcdermott 62), the universe is a set structure with no real change, other than the movement of things within it.  This also, of course, leads to the conclusion that the universe is completely deterministic, as everything is already set out in a way that, by the laws of cause and effect, will continue without propensity for new possibilities to arise.  Our concept of “free will” is then simply an illusion (Nadler).  To me, this all seems perfectly logical.

            So now we can apply these rules to some beginning of the universe scenarios.  Whether it was a big bang or the hand of God or anything else of that nature that “created” the universe as we know it is in fact irrelevant.  First, if we consider the idea that absolutely nothing existed before this creation event, then this could not occur, because this would require some real change – from nothing to something.  Second, perhaps time did not exist before the creation event, and the event simply set time in motion.  This again would not make sense, because the universe could not go from a completely static state to one where movement occurs within it – that again would be a real change.  So we’re left with one clear option: that our universe that exists now has always existed in the same way, and there was no beginning.  This isn’t to say that the big bang didn’t occur, as it seems to have in all rationality, but before it there must have been a sort of structure already in place that could cause it.  And, even if time didn’t exist at that point in the same sense that it does now, the universe had to be non-static in some way, in which one thing could lead to another.  The other option, as some of modern physics seems to suggest, is that “time” itself is an illusion, functioning more like another dimension of space, and the universe is completely static, in which case a beginning of the universe would not make any sense at all. 

            These conclusions may not be exactly what Spinoza would have predicted, however his principles do lend to my personal deduction that the universe could not have had a true beginning.  But who am I to make this grand proposition? Even as I sit here explaining this theory, the major paradox of why the universe even exists at all, rather than not existing, seems to make just as little sense as a universe beginning from nothing.  Ultimately, I’m limited by my all too simplistic human brain, and though I may use logic and rationality to predict what truths seem most likely, I know I can never fully understand the mysteries that have intrigued people for thousands of years.                          

                

Works Cited

McDermott, John J. A Cultural Introduction to Philosophy. New York: Knopf, 1985. Print.

Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

Nadler, Steven. "Baruch Spinoza." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. N.p., 2013. Web. Nov.-Dec. 2015.

Frankenstein and the Nature of Morality

            The novel Frankenstein is a story of ethical dilemmas.  The most obvious one, of course, is that of creating life.  The novel explores the potential consequences of humans using technology to create a living creature from scratch.  However, there are other, equally profound ethical issues presented by the book.  One of these is humans’ treatment of and moral obligations to other living creatures, as well as to each other and ourselves.  This is exemplified by Victor Frankenstein’s choices with how to treat his creation, a monstrous human-like living being.  The monster may seem like an evil, heartless brute at times due to the havoc he wreaks and murders he commits, however his violence is in actuality a result of his reeling against the immense pain and isolation he feels for being an outcast from society because of who he is.  Victor at first abandons the monster when he sees the hideousness of what he has created, initiating these feelings in the monster.  Later on in the story, Victor is confronted with the consequences of his creating and rejecting the monster, and must decide how to deal with them and whether to even help him, particularly when the monster demands that he make a new, female creature for him to have as a companion (Shelley).  Victor’s challenges and decisions with how to treat the monster raise ethical questions of whether or not he has some type of moral obligation to help the creature. And these ultimately raise broader questions of what it means to act morally in the first place.

            There are two basic arguments for the nature of Victor’s obligation to the monster. First, that he has an obligation to him, and it would be ethically right for him to help the monster in some way. And second, He has no obligation to the monster, and there is no ethical reason for him to help the creature.  The answer could be argued on a variety of different grounds.  For example, there may be a special moral responsibility one has to something living that one creates.  Or it could be argued that the monster either is or is not intelligent and capable enough to care for himself without having someone responsible for his wellbeing. 

            These are all important things to consider, however they are ultimately irrelevant to the question of whether Victor has an obligation to the monster.  This is because, when we talk about moral obligations, there is no point at which someone does not have an obligation to another being.  As long as there is a potential for one being to have any type of effect on another being’s experience, they have a moral obligation to them; that is an obligation to simply act morally towards that other being.  Victor has the obligation to act in a moral fashion towards the monster, whatever that may specifically mean.

            If it is true that every living being has a moral obligation to every other living being, then there are two questions that naturally arise and should be answered about this concept. First, there is the question of what it means to be a “living being”.  There are lots of forms of life and things that have been considered “alive”; however in the realm of ethics, the only life that really matters is anything that has the ability to experience positive and/or negative feelings, and whose experience may be altered by the actions of particular living beings.  This can, of course, never be proven in a creature, however there are forms of life that are generally assumed to have or not have this quality. For example, humans and other animals are typically assumed to have this, while plants are not.  Although it is never stated exactly how Victor’s monster is created or what he is made from, the book seems to want us to assume that he is every bit the same as a human in this respect.

            The second question is what exactly it means to act morally.  Many philosophies have defined moral behavior by the nature of the intentions of the person committing the actions.  Here, a person may have good intentions that seek to do “good” unto others, or bad intentions that seek to do “bad” unto others (Driver).  This is problematic, however, because there is no such thing as a truly “bad” intention.  It is in the inherent nature of living beings to always want the most moral outcome to occur in any situation.  It makes no sense for anybody to wish an undesired outcome on themselves, and likewise a living being will always wish the most desired outcome on those around them.  It may not always seem like this, however this is simply because a person’s concept of what is morally right is very often misguided.  For example, a person may unjustly attempt to cause harm to another person, but this is simply because they feel morally justified in their actions and do not fully understand the suffering they are causing in the other person.  This definition also doesn’t address what “good” and “bad” really mean.

            The best definition of moral actions, and therefore our obligation to living beings has been described in the philosophy of utilitarianism, one of the most important ethical concepts to be used by thinkers throughout history.  The general idea of utilitarianism is that the most “moral” or “good” action is the one that produces the greatest positive effect among all parties involved (Driver).  I would describe it specifically as the action that creates the greatest overall positive effect among the experiences of all living beings that have the potential to be affected by an action.  What this means is that our obligation to other living beings is to act the most morally in this sense as possible. 

            Even with this general rule, it can still be very difficult to determine what the best action to take is, and there is still much room for ethical debate on many issues.  Victor struggles greatly with determining what action will have the best effect among everyone around him, but ultimately he makes many rational decisions.  For example, when the monster demands he make him a female companion, he eventually decides that it’s not a good idea.  Though he does have an obligation to help the monster in some way, he know that creating another monster could be extremely dangerous to himself and other people, possibly even resulting in the breeding of even more monsters.  By considering the overall effect on everyone involved, he is able to make a rational moral decision (even though this eventually leads to the monster murdering several others out of rage) (Shelley). 

            Like Victor, our task is to rationally weigh out the potential positive and negative effects of our actions on other living beings, as well as ourselves, in order to determine what is morally best.  Luckily, as inherently moral beings, this is what our minds will always attempt to do anyway, and it seems indicative that we are getting better at this as a species as we increase in intelligence and overall interconnectedness with one another. 

Works Cited

Driver, Julia. "The History of Utilitarianism." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. Edward N. Zalta. N.p., 2014. Web. Nov. 2015.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, and Jones, 1818. The Project Gutenberg. Web. 2015.

Creativity in A Non-Creative Universe

            What is “creativity”?  This word is passed back and forth often in our culture, usually referring to a quality a person has in which they act in original and interesting ways.  This form is both highly valued as a positive attribute someone can have, and yet often undervalued, especially when being creative could lead to financial or social risks.  The obvious realm that this concept is used in is when discussing art.  A child may be seen as creative if they create a unique drawing or painting, for example, or a filmmaker or musician may appear creative if the works they produce are somehow unique from other artists in their field.  But this term can also be applied to people of other lines of work, such as scientists or engineers who are innovative in their methods and the things they create. 

            But what is “creativity” really? When a musician writes a song, where does that uniqueness in his or her material actually arise from?  Are they really producing anything totally new or are they simply borrowing elements from music they’ve heard in the past and rearranging them in new ways?  Or as singer-songwriter Danny Dolinger bluntly put it, “any songwriter who doesn’t admit to being a thief is also a liar” (Auxier 118).  This certainly seems true when listening to much of the music that is popular today, which often displays a mix of influences from a variety of genres from the past half century.  Music serves as a good example to pose this question, but the same thing can be asked of any type of thing created by people. 

            To answer these questions it is helpful to expand our definition of “creativity”.  The Merriam-Webster online dictionary gives as broad a definition as you’ll ever need: “the ability to make new things or think of new ideas” (Merriam-Webster).  If we think of creativity as simply being able to “make new things”, or, in other words, the ability to create, we can really think of any action or event in the universe as having creativity.  Because every action always creates something, right?  Well, again the question comes up, and this time in a broader sense – is there such thing as actual “creation”?  Does anything truly new in the universe ever actually arise, or are things simply rearranged into different combinations?  This problem has been debated by thinkers throughout history, including Kant who described the two possibilities of occasionalism and pre-established harmony.  To explain these positions simply, occasionalism implies that the universe is subject to real change at any point in time, such as incited by an all powerful being such as God, and pre-established harmony holds that that the universe changes through time, but these changes are simply part of a long chain of events established at the beginning of time with no real freedom for new possibilities to arise (Kant 309).                   

            The rational answer to this problem falls largely in line with the latter position.  If we think of the universe as ruled by cause and effect interactions, it makes sense that nothing should be able to arise without a previous element coming before it and an already set outcome in place.  Thus, nothing new is actually created, just a different arrangement of things with in a set system.  This is similar to the belief taught by Parmenides that “something which is, comes from being” (Mcdermott 60).  It seems obvious, but if everything comes from what already exists, then creation and creativity cannot exist – at least not in the truest sense.

            To bring things back to more practical terms, it’s true that a musician can never create something entirely new.  Even if they are not directly copying from another musician, the music they create is still largely a combination of all the influences they’ve been exposed throughout their lives.  But this doesn’t mean that creativity can’t have importance in our lives.  That’s because creation in the sense of reordering still means that something entirely unique is produced.  Yes, it a combination of already existing parts, but the specific combination is one that has never existed before and never will exist again.  This is why music and nature and everything else in our lives has the ability to continually surprise and delight us.  And in this sense the individual quality of creativity, as in the commonly used definition, is plenty real and something to be encouraged.  Though we can’t produce anything truly new, the reordering of existing elements and cultivation of influences is what drives innovation and how great art is produced.  The problem is when we rely too much on obvious combinations of elements.  This we should avoid at all costs.                     

References

Auxier, Randall. "Magic Pages and Mythic Plants." Led Zeppelin and Philosophy All Will Be Revealed. Ed. Scott Calef. Chicago: Open Court, 2009. Print.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgement. Trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987.     Print.

McDermott, John J. A Cultural Introduction to Philosophy. New York: Knopf, 1985. Print.

Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

The Real Nature of Magic

           When most people think of the word “magic”, they think of that supernatural force so often portrayed in pop culture and children’s stories.  This version of magic essentially involves forces outside the realm of the scientifically understood order of nature, and the ways in which living creatures are affected by and are able to manipulate them.  This makes for great story telling.  After all, when you’re not limited the normal laws of nature, pretty much anything goes.  But rarely will you meet someone who will admit they actually believe this sort of magic exists in the real world.  In our society its primary function is as a device to help us escape the confines of the real world, if only briefly, for the benefit of entertainment and enjoyment.  Magic has personally never meant anything more than this to me, and I’ve moved away from it even more as I’ve grown older and found more interest in entertainment and art that closely represents real life.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in magic.  That’s because the word “magic” means many things, and has meant many things throughout history.  And I think they all have something in common.

            First, there is, of course, the supernatural implications of “magic”.  15^th century philosopher Giordano Bruno wrote about the many definitions of the term used during his time, many of which related to the perceived ability to perform actions that tapped into a higher order of nature, such as connecting with spirits (Bruno and De Lucca 105).  During his time, the Catholic Church was persecuting individuals based on the unfounded notion that they were performing ritual magic declared as witchcraft that was doing the work of the Devil (Mackay 548).  During the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, members of the magical society the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, featuring many prominent thinkers of the time, practiced and studied a variety supernatural rituals, including divination and alchemy (Cranmer and Billings).  Many of these historical versions of magic have manifested in the stories and tales of magic we see today.  Despite what many have believed, and what some now still believe, the supernatural aspects of these beliefs have no empirical proof of existence, and have no place in our scientific understanding of the universe.

            However, many of these systems of belief have had deeper meanings behind them that have relevance even if you don’t believe in the supernatural aspects.  Much like many religions throughout history, which have used non-provable claims about the order of nature to advocate for codes of morals, magical belief systems have often used similar claims to represent methods of improving oneself and the universe.  Writer Alice Bailey, for example, used the term white magic to refer to forces that can be utilized by people to aid in personal growth, help extend consciousness in the universe, and lead the world towards an age of peace and enlightenment (Bailey 12).  Whether the practices she outlines to do this actually work may be questionable, but, viewed from the right angle, her version of magic can be helpful in finding inner peace no matter what you believe. 

            Then there’s the fact that “magic” doesn’t always refer to the supernatural.  Bruno referred to what was commonly known as “natural magic” to describe “wondrous things” that can be done simply by manipulating regular powers of nature, such as in chemistry and medicine (Bruno and De Lucca 105).  After all, haven’t we all used the word to describe something that that amazes us or has special meaning to us, even if there’s a perfectly logical explanation for its cause?  Randall Auxier, in his essay on Led Zeppelin and magic, describes the way in which this type of magic can be created by ordinary people.  He uses an example of playing an instrument and getting so into the zone that you are able to improvise incredible combinations of notes without having to think them out.  This type of magic is caused by the will, but is not necessarily logically understood at the time (Auxier 119).   In short, if it amazes you and feels like magic, then it is magic, and we can all be magicians.     

            An underlying aspect of essentially all definitions of magic is that it creates a sense of wonder and amazement that such a force or thing could exist.  For some people this has been found in what they believe to be the supernatural.  For the rest of us who don’t believe in such a thing, there is still plenty of magic in the universe.  From the astounding beauty of Earth’s natural landscape to the small wonders of everyday life, it’s been all around us all along.             

Works Cited

Auxier, Randall. "Magic Pages and Mythic Plants." Led Zeppelin and Philosophy All Will Be                      Revealed. Ed. Scott Calef. Chicago: Open Court, 2009. Print.

Bailey, Alice. A Treatise on White Magic, Or, The Way of the Disciple. Eastford: Martino Fine,    2012. Print.

Bruno, Giordano, and Robert De. Lucca. Cause, Principle, and Unity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge             UP, 1998. Print.

Cranmer, Steven, and Albert Billings. "The Golden Dawn FAQ." The Golden Dawn FAQ. 1 Dec.     1999. Web. 22 Oct. 2015.

Mackay, Christopher S. Malleus Maleficarum. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. Print.

The Ethics of Eliciting Information from Living Beings

              In today’s day and age, we see a constant flow and exchange of information like never seen before in history.  Much of this information lies literally at our fingertips.  Questions concerning everything from current events to history and science can often easily and fairly accurately be answered with a quick Google search.  But beyond this general access to hoards of information, our ability to receive information directly from each other has also become oftentimes instantaneous, through email, texting, and similar functions.  But this environment has also created ethical dilemmas, as it is also often possible to receive information from others without their consent.  A controversial topic has become internet privacy, and the ability of strangers, companies, and even the government to access people’s personal information that they may not want to be available.  But the notion that obtaining information from others can be immoral is nothing new.  Throughout history, people have found enumerable ways to obtain information from others, oftentimes through force.  A prime example is the Inquisition, during which the Roman Catholic Church used elaborate techniques of torture and interrogation to attempt to elicit admissions of heresy from suspects (Mackay 548).  Today, certain practices of gaining information from others have incited major controversy, such as the US Government’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques with terrorist suspects, and the NSA’s collecting of people’s private information.  The concept could even be broadened to include obtaining information from creatures other than humans, which can be morally questionable in some forms, such as animal testing.  The examples stated above are, of course, extreme examples of gaining information from living beings, but it’s important to look at these to realize that even they are not black and white in terms of morality.  Therefore, it’s necessary to think more broadly to determine the ethics of related situations that have consequence in our own lives.               

When considering the ethics of eliciting information from people and other creatures, it is first important to understand why the practices involved can be immoral.  Probably the vast majority of the time, it is not immoral. We go about our lives asking people questions multiple times a day, mostly with good intentions, or at least with no result that harms any other beings.  However, there are obvious ways in which eliciting information can quite harmful to others (and I say “information” rather than “truth”, because when someone receives information, there is no way to know for sure that it is true, and though the person may believe it and act as if it’s true, it may be quite far from the actual truth).  Overall, we can say that if an action has a net negative result among all affected parties, it is immoral.  Within this rule, there are two general ways that eliciting information from living beings can be immoral.  The first involves the process itself of eliciting information and any direct harm that results from it.  An obvious example would be torture.  During the “witch hunts” of the Inquisition, inquisitors would seek out women they believed to be carrying out the will of the Devil through witchcraft, and use torture techniques to elicit a confession from them (Mackay 548).  These methods, which were obviously harmful to the women involved, seem quite immoral to us today, especially as experts now say that the accusations of crimes attributed to the women have virtually no truth to them (Mackay 32).  The second way that eliciting information can be immoral involves the results of that information being obtained.  An example might be if an enemy of the US cajoled someone to leak classified documents, which were then used to carry out a terrorist attack.

            There are many more ways that the process or results of eliciting information from a living thing can be immoral, but the morality of these is not always so clear cut.  Even with extreme examples, there are often strong arguments on each side.  In the case of torture, a fair question is, if it prevents more suffering than it causes, then can it be worth it?  The same goes for government spying and animal testing, which can have perfectly good intentions.  Rules should be in place to regulate this type of thing to make sure it is not abused, but there is no overall rule of whether each of these is overall good or bad.  For this reason, the ethics of eliciting information from living creatures should be thought of just like any other ethical dilemma.  Simply put, if there is good reason to believe that the action will do more good than harm, then it makes sense to take that action.  Of course, even the Catholic Church had their own belief that they were doing their part to thwart the plans of Satan during the Inquisition (Mackay 33), but that is the nature of ethics.  We’re all limited by own beliefs of what is good and bad, so we just have to do the best we can.         

Works Cited

Mackay, Christopher S. Malleus Maleficarum. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. Print.

Living In a Rational or Irrational Universe

Throughout history, there have always been essentially two ways of thinking about the universe.  First, we live in a universe where everything plays out by a system of rational laws.  And second, there is room for events and entities that have no rational cause.  To put things in simpler terms, one can imagine the symbolic example of a set of dominos lined up back to back.  It would seem obvious that when the domino at one end is pushed over, this would cause a chain reaction, knocking all of the dominos over.  However, a person who adheres to the second way of thinking would think it plausible that knocking the domino over at the end could lead to any number of different outcomes where there would not be a chain reaction knocking all of the dominos over. 

The second way of thinking basically says that logic and rationality does not always have to exist when events occur.  Strangely enough, this has been the pretty well dominant way of thinking throughout human history.  Religion essentially relies on this.  Belief in magic and spirits is the same.  To me it seems extremely obvious that the universe should function in a rational way.  It makes no sense to me that that an event could happen without a cause.  After all, I am a biology student who hopes to become a research scientist eventually.  How could I even form my career if not for the simple assumption that future events can be reasonably predicted, based on what has been observed in the past?

            But even I have my doubts.  It is of course true that there are many phenomena that have yet to be understood by science, as well as many more that will never be understood by human rational thought.  This is due to the limits of human intelligence, and our limited reach into the universe.  However, there are certain paradoxes which do not seem as if they could be answered, even with infinite intelligence and knowledge of the universe.  The ultimate question, of course, is why anything exists at all.  But equally confounding is the question of how consciousness can exist, or how we are able to experience the universe rather than just being inanimate objects moving about like robots.  For believers in an irrational universe, these don’t necessarily need explanations, rather they just are.  This has been an easy answer to many for difficult philosophical questions throughout history.

            But I can’t settle on such a simplistic answer.  As much as these dilemmas may call into question how far one can go in considering the universe rational, my mind simply can’t conceive of the notion of effect without cause.  My resolution is simply that, though everything must have a logical explanation, it is far beyond the scope of human intelligence to ever solve all of the mysteries of the universe.  Some answers may come in a form that our minds can’t even comprehend.  Science and rational thought has their limits, and this will probably remain true no matter how intelligent we become.  Even with our most thoroughly proven theories we have today, it is impossible to know for certain whether these are truly correct or just perceived to be correct. 

With all that being said, I mean in no way to undermine the importance of science.  Though it has its limits, it is literally all we’ve got to advance ourselves in a rational universe.  Science looks for patterns and repetition in nature through which to make predictions about the true nature of things, and how things will be in the future.  And so far, throughout human history, we’ve seemed to be pretty good at making these predictions in order to advance civilization.  At some point, we’ve all got to come to accept that there are those questions that we can never and will never be able to answer.  But this shouldn’t stop us from trying to get as close to the answers as we can.                   

The Moral Dilemmas of Modern Technology

             Every so often, it occurs to me what a unique time period I live in.  I just so happen to have been born right as one not only one century, but also as one millennium drew to a close.  That fact by itself shows that I was born on the brink of a new era in human history.  But, in truth, these numbers mean relatively nothing if society doesn’t change from one epoch to the next.  Although many big changes have occurred throughout the course of human history, these changes have often been slow, occurring over hundreds, even thousands of years.  But when I think back to when I was a small child, I realize that not a single person in the entire world had a smart phone. Or a Facebook account.  And when I imagine my parents at my age, I realize that they didn’t even have a concept of “the internet”.  These things may seem somewhat trivial, but the truth is that the very things that define much of my existence today have only come into being within the last 25 years or so.  But that’s nothing compared to what I can imagine the future will hold.  We all truly sit now on the very precipice of an immense and sudden turning point in human history. 

            But this raises major questions, as well.  If your first thought after all this talk is “Does this mean the end is nigh?”, then you are not out of line.  Whether this radical change in the nature of human life means we are finally headed towards a utopia, or we are one wrong move away from global disaster, there may not be much we can do about it.  However, we are nevertheless forced to consider the all important question of how exactly we should be using technology as a society, when its effects are having such a dramatic impact all around the globe.               

            Technology, in its essence, is a disruption of nature.  One may easily place humans within the realm of the “natural”, and claim that whatever we do is a part of our evolutionary pathway and is completely normal. This school of thought dates all the way back to ancient times with the Greek philosopher Parmenides’ doctrine of “being is one”, that the universe is all one complete natural entity (McDermott 62).  This is a completely fair take on things.  However, it ignores the fact that concepts like “natural” and “unnatural” have essentially no meaning if everything is in the domain of the natural.  We continually use these terms in our daily lives, so they must refer to something.  Though there may not be some scientific criteria for what is natural and what is not, the concept most often is used to describe that which is not produced as a result of intelligent life, and “unnatural” is that which is.  “Technology” is really any tool used by intelligent life for the purpose of creating any of these “unnatural” changes, or in other words, a direct manipulation of nature.    

            To many people, this in itself is something immoral.  But, truthfully, how can something be immoral if there is no choice in the matter?  Simply by living and using any tools at all, humans are using technology. We have no choice, if we want to survive.  And humans have understood since ancient times the idea that the universe is in constant “flux”, or change of some sort (McDermott 59); and because of this we have to constantly use our resources to adapt the way we live.  For these reasons, technology is not a choice.  The choice that does exist, and which bares moral implications, is how we should use technology.

            The moral dilemmas created by technology are extremely vast.  In every facet of our lives there are potential down sides to technology.  The two categories these can fall under are damage to nature and damage to ourselves.  Damage to nature includes the obvious environmental destruction (through pollution, habitat destruction, etc.), but also treatment of animals within our own systems (such as the food industry), and other things.  Damage to ourselves is widely recognized and includes everything from the dehumanizing effects of advanced warfare to the negative effects on our waistlines from watching too much TV.  But, of course, technology provides endless benefits and necessities to humans, allowing us to exist in the highly interconnected, complex world that we do today.  Indeed, technology has a quality that 16^th century thinker Giordano Bruno might describe as “natural magic”; it “does wondrous things merely by manipulating active and passive powers” (105).  So, there’s a balance that must be created.  How can we fully utilize the wonder and utility of technology, while avoiding as many of the downsides as possible?

            The truth: there is no satisfying answer.  The world is much too complex to slap down any specific universal rules about what should and shouldn’t be done with technology.  But, rules and regulations are incredibly important for specific cases.  Pollution, warfare, and safety mechanisms for transportation, to name a few things should of course be guided by proper policy.  The most important thing, however, is simply a strong moral compass that each of us must strive to be guided by.  With each of our own personal uses of technology, perhaps the best thing to ask is “will the positive effects of what I’m doing be worth the negative effects”?  It’s not always easy to answer, but it gets us somewhere.

            A few decades from now, the technological landscape of our world could well be unimaginably different from what we see today.  Today’s smart phones and laptops could seem as primitive as many things from a generation ago seem today.  However, the same moral guidelines should continue to persist if we want to use the coming waves of technology responsibly.                       

                        

Works Cited

Bruno, Giordano, and Alfonso Ingegno. Giordano Bruno: "Cause, Principle and Unity" and Essays             on Magic. Trans. Richard J. Blackwell and Robert De Lucca. Cambridge: Cambridge                           UP, 1998. Print.

McDermott, John J. A Cultural Introduction to Philosophy. New York: Knopf, 1985. Print.