Ignorance Breeds Disease - The Hybrid Embryo Debate May 19, 2008
Posted by Mark Mitchell in : Blog, Philosophy, Science, Technology , add a comment
I have been shocked by the backlash by ‘ethical’ and ‘religious’ pundits to the Hybrid Embryo research who’s fate is currently being determined in the House of Commons. Simply put, the research is to examine degenerative diseases and requires the combination of human and animal cells mixed within embryonic stem cells. These embryos will not become mature or allowed to develop within a long time frame. Much like stem cell research the embryos are no more than simple cells where the genetic changes can be closely examined to help fight diseases such as Motor Neurone Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, and Alzheimer’s.
The general argument from the clergy and from ethical zealots is that we are ‘tampering with nature’. An example of many of these ill-informed opinions I think is summed up in this truly dangerous knee-jerk reaction from people such as Rebecca Bradbury from Exeter who says on BBC have your say:
This has just confirmed my fears…humans have become so arrogant that they are playing God. We have diseases for a reason; to stop the population becoming so large the earth can not sustain the numbers. I can not see any good reason why hybrid embryos are created in the first place, it is leaving the door open for the unscrupulous to exploit and potentially cause irrevocable damage to the human race. When are scientists and the government just going to leave nature alone?
This is a perfect example of the twisted mirror that the anti-science conservatist lobby adopts as an argument against scientific progress. So lets look at what Rebecca actually states:
1. Humans play god.
Now I’m not sure that Rebecca has quite grasped the idea that it is surely pure arrogance to assume that she knows these seemingly invisible barriers that mankind should not cross. What exactly determines when man becomes ‘arrogant’ or attempts to become what she considers ‘god’. She obviously knows the limit that we should not cross and this is it. Hardly an arrogant assumption is it?
2. Diseases for a Reason and Natural Balance
Diseases have no reason. They exist due to a number of environmental and genetic factors. The human race has successful rid ourselves of a huge swathe of diseases over the last 100 years and we will continue to do so as long as people suffer with terrible afflictions.
The Earth with science is quite capable of supporting many more multitudes of people as long as we are careful not to ruin our habitat beyond a livable threshold. There is NO ‘natural balance’ in nature. Nature represents a constantly shifting, changing and developing system that may accommodate humanity or not. Science generally tips the balance in our favour and it is politics, money and greed that drive science into becoming a destructive force, not science itself. Maybe Rebecca would like to return to the more ‘natural’ Medieval period where peoples lives were incredibly short, hard and disease ridden?
3. No reason for research.
Often people who punt the ‘no reason’ argument have not informed themselves of the very research they are witch hunting. If Rebecca had bothered to read the papers she would realise that this research is to investigate whether particularly awful diseases can be cured. Simple. She even acknowledges this in her previous sentence.
4. Unscrupulous Use.
Now this is when the arguments against research become simply absurd. What do people think will happen, clones of hybrid humans and tigers roaming around killing people? Nazi style camps holding mutants that will need to be contained as the human race plummets into some zombie style survival episode? What exactly is this ‘damage’? Again another loaded sentence full of hyperbole.
5. Leave Nature Alone.
If we had adopted this idea we would never have developed civilisation or risen above our competitors to carve out our niche within what is an intensely hostile environment. Real survival which many of us do not have to face on a day to day basis is not a pleasant experience. Starvation, disease, short brutal lives with no justice system, no government, no sanitation, no food stocks, no culture and no survival. If we left nature alone this is exactly the world we would be living in, no future, no hope, no progress. The human race would indeed be short lived and Rebecca would not have the privilege to assault intelligent minds with such banality.
Richard Dawkins - A fundemental rationaliser. October 15, 2007
Posted by Mark Mitchell in : Blog, Philosophy, Science , 3 commentsI have struck this article off as I think it is not factually correct and was a bit of a rant, however, there are points relevant to my overriding uncomfortableness with RD’s current PR approach.
Like Richard Dawkins, I am myself an atheist, that is, I do not believe that divine beings exist, let alone influence our lives. I have been fascinated to see the rise of Richard Dawkins over the years and have been a fan of his approach and work until the last couple of years. There is no doubt that this known but hardly celebrity level academic has suddenly exploded into the public eye through a number of TV programmes and of course through the controversial book ‘The God Delusion’. With the establishment of the Richard Dawkins Foundation of Reason and Science (RDF), he is now the figurehead of a movement to rid the world of the superstitious and ignorant views of religious zealots and lazy thinkers.
Richard has questioned representatives of most faiths and has exposed clairvoyants and spiritualist charlatans for what they are, and although his arguments are solid and completely rational, I wonder what his objectives really are? Let us not forget Richards background. He is from a privileged landed gentry background and certainly represents the intellectual elite in our country. From the lofty heights of academic supremacy there is no doubt he can look down upon the teeming masses, scrutinize their illogical actions and dissect them into a palatable example of how ignorant many people truly are. Ignorance is often the result of poor education/cultural influences and is also the result of choosing to be ignorant as a coping mechanism to deal with emotional trauma. An erudite and accomplished academic will find it incredibly easy to overturn most orthodox religious assumptions as well as dissect the fickle modern interpretations that seem to constantly evolve to cope with modern changes. Yet, within the madness are reasons however banal or poignant. The reasons why people choose irrationality over reason is often due to a survival or coping mechanism. Dealing with the death of close relative or adapting to a harsh theocratic dictatorship. This is obvious, but what may not be so obvious is that poverty plays a massive role in the establishment of the uneducated, traumatised and terrible life experiences that people have to deal with. The disparity between rich and poor is extreme and I will not venture to explain what most people know to be the truth.
This is where my admiration of Richard Dawkins starts to curdle as I watch him simply argue in a rather self-satisfied way that rationalism and scientific methodology can give wonder and hope to everyone in the same way that is does to him and no doubt as it does to myself. The truth is that atheism is a luxury, something to treasure and respect. It is predominately found in rich liberal western societies and has no doubt freed many people from the constrains of dogma and superstition. I argue as much as Dawkins against supposition and assumptions believing in a Socratic method to weed out untruths and delusion. Yet, like Socrates, I believe that personal development should over-ride financial aspirations, something I’m not convinced Richard Dawkins completely agrees with, especially with BUY NOW buttons plastered all over his website. As much as Dawkins seems to understand rationality he seems to be incapable of understanding the importance of self-delusion. There is no doubt that lying is fundamentally important to every-one’s sanity and forms a fundamental part of our creative and imaginative tapestry as a species. Embellishments, exaggerations, and lies are creative processes and no doubt form a hugely important part of every day lives. From fiction books to films, urban myths to legends their prevalence and importance cannot be understated. We all allow ourselves these escapes, yet it is most evident in areas where poverty stricken people live life in a way most westerners would find intolerable. It is here Dawkins fails to deliver a fair case for an idealised secular world through evangelised atheism. To truly enlighten the ignorant he needs to tackle its main cause, poverty. It is this irony that strikes at the heart of Dawkins argument. How can a man of so much privilege and obvious intelligence fail to recognise that the very wealth and liberality that allows him his freedom to study, scrutinize and communicate his ideas is formed directly from the capital which drives these people into poverty and ignorance. Dawkins is a perfect example of a bourgeois, intellectual bully boy.
To sustain my interest I would like to see him become a braver man and address the socio-political reasons why people turn to religion or fundamentalism. I know empirical data to Dawkins may just seem like filler in an already won argument but I think that Dawkins needs to challenge his own cultural inheritance and its contribution to keeping the plebians ignorant. Understanding and facing the reality of poverty and the inevitable poor educational standards this creates should be his priority now and would certainly give him far more credibility than slamming average Joes who never had the chances he had. Dawkins should be addressing why people turn to religion and supernatural beliefs rather than proceeding to duck shoot the ignorant.
Null:Void and the Temporal Brain February 25, 2007
Posted by Mark Mitchell in : Blog, Philosophy , add a comment
Null:Void and the Temporal Brain
I have for a while been pondering over the various philosophical, metaphysical and sociological questions that we all face about the actual substance of our life experience. I have a couple of theories that are personal conjecture and not academically qualified in any way, but which I think still require a certain degree of examination.
Introduction
Firstly I have been examining the nature of non-existence in both pre-life and post-life. There is a general assumption within most religious ideas, that once a person has existed this somehow qualifies them as already obtaining some kind of permanent immortality (soul). I have made an assumption in my theory that the pre-life (null) and post-life (void) are one of the same thing. They are states of non-consciousness, completely blank and devoid of any direct observation or measurement. This may seem like a sweeping assumption but one can suggest that if we have made no scientifically tested communication with both pre-lives (people yet to exist) or post-lives (people who are now dead) that these states are somehow separated from our conscious stream. There is no doubt that these pre- and post- lives have an effect which can be seen in our need to celebrate and study post-lives (history) and also the way we consider the future or pre-lives, however, this impact is formed by our own needs and perceptions and not by those consciences directly.
Null:Void
The null:void represents the non-existence of our consciousness. Before we were born we were not aware of anything; and I suggest that this is same state that occurs post-life. We did not experience the passing millennia that led to the events that created our awareness neither will we experience the infinity that will pass once we are dead. These states of non-consciousness the Null:Void are both exactly analogous and for the sake of my argument will be assumed to be so throughout this piece.
As we can never experience a non-conscious state or the Null:Void it would seem to make sense that we will never cease to be conscious.
Due to our inability to experience anything other than consciousness, we are, in effect, bound to our consciousness in such a way that the passing of infinity before and after our existence will be instantaneous to us. If this is true one can assume that we will never experience post-life as we did not experience pre-life. Both states only serve to create the infinity of probabilities until such time as we are conscious again. Does this sound like solipsism? Potentially to some, but yet there is a logical process in these assumptions and a fair argument to make for this interpretation of the Null:Void states.
I agree that none of us fully understand what realms our consciousness could potentially pervade and there is much discussion about the quantum relationship between our consciousness and its physical/quantum environment. However in practicable terms there is currently no evidence to suggest direct interference from pre-/-post lives, or in other terms from Null:Void states of consciousness.
So what does this mean?
My argument is simple, you have never been in a Null:Void state. Neither will you ever be in a Null:Void state and be aware of it. There is no cross over between Null:Void states and our own consciousness. This being so, I am not automatically suggesting that when you die you will suddenly open your eyes and exist again. There is the potential for you to be reconstructed but this starts entering the realms of science fiction. If we are to assume that this is effectively your ‘lot’ then what is the point of Null:Void theory if it offers nothing but the affirmation of non-existence.
I suggest that the Null:Void state confirms the perpetuation of our consciousness by our inability not to be conscious. In this I find a compelling argument, whether it is true is maybe not as important as the impact this has on our lives in ways, maybe, we had never realised. Maybe this simple assumption has been ingrained into us and forms a formative part of our psyche from which has spawned much of our social, mythological and religious narrative.
Maybe this idea drives us all in a subtle way. It may also actually embody our relationship with death and our dreams of immortality. Most if not all religion suggests eternal life, this may not be so stupid if you take into account the Null:Void argument. I am not in any way condoning the use of un-substantiated claims of ‘God’ or miracles and so forth, but I am examining the reason why in all of these religions that there is an assumption of life after death. If you take the Null:Void theory as a metaphysical conundrum, this could well be the premise by which we all consciously or sub-consciously find our own deaths incomprehensible.
The Temporal Brain
The brain has been interpreted as being an organ that either:
a) Encapsulates our consciousness and connects it with our external reality.
Or
b) Connects our consciousness with our external reality.
The first assumption is often purported by more scientific reasoning while the second is common in religious thinking.
We know that the world that surrounds us is certainly not as we ‘see’ it. It is a construction that our brain creates for us to relate and interact to external events. Our sight is not created by the eye itself but the visual stimulus the eye transmits through electrical activity to the brain which is then processed and our ‘sight’ is formed around very particular rules. (See more info). It is limited, can be fooled, and is certainly a representation of our surroundings.
I am not seeking to answer whether the brain is either argument a) or b) but it is fair to suggest that in both arguments the focus on the ‘location’ of consciousness seems to be the overriding difference.
This ‘location’ is often a key debate for philosophical thought and theological writings as well as scientific experimentation (albeit limited). Let us assume it could be either, but also consider that the brain interprets time much in the same way as the eye interprets photonic activity. Key to the interpretation of every external stimulus is a metric to put experiences into some context. This temporal ‘experience’ is often wrongly or rightly interpreted as a stream. We know now that this may not be the case and in effect our entire life existence is in one ‘slice’ of reality which is a solid state or in other terms a complete unit of conscious experience. Much like representations the eye transmits to the brain, the interpretation of the temporal may very well be constructed by our brains as a constant stream with one moment moving to the next, but this may not be the true nature of our temporal existence.
If our interpretation of time then is not an irrefutable passing from one moment to another (or stream), if this interpretation is as synthetic as our brain reconstructing visual information, then the relationship between our consciousness, time and the null:void may, in fact, be far more complex that previously assumed.
The brain has the ability to model and predict. This is true in all of us. This is based on previous experience and due to complex genetic and chemical interactions with the body. The interpretation of time as a temporal flow, we will assume, is just that, an interpretation. This interpretation enables us to use specific points of reference to construct the probable outcome of actions. This construction of probable outcomes is such an an intrinsic part of our contextualisation of experience that it forms a fundamental aspect of our interpretation of reality.
These points of reference may not come necessarily from just our experience or chemical interactions, but may be formed by the nature of the experiences themselves. When we reduce down these points of reference to choices we could granulise them into an almost infinite amount of sub-atomic interactions/choices, yet we contextualise by simplifying the experience into an essential selection of choices. Either way it is the same process. The choices that we do not make or consider could be considered Null:Void outcomes. Choices that never existed as a reality; choices that have no impact on our situation once the choice is made. Yet this non-existent choice formed an essential part of the decision making process. Its un-experiencable reality that we modeled the outcomes from to justify our final choice. In a sense the brain creates outcomes, models realities, sifts through potentials and finalises an action. It is an incredible temporal machine, a multi-versal mechanism of probability reasoning. I might go so far as to say it creates ‘Time’ experience as a mechanism for choices that initially appear from a Null:Void state. It selects preferable realities, moulds our path through the temporal maze and may in some way connect with these Null:Void potentials albeit in a completely instinctual way to contextualise the usefulness of including an alternative choice.
The Null:Void may not be the absence of consciousness but the potential for its existence. Our consciousness changes from one moment to the next and the choices that form these changes are contextualised within the relationship between ourselves and the Null:Void.
I hope you have found my discussion at the very least entertaining. I believe that our social experience and our perceptions of reality are somehow connected to some kind of basic inherent awareness of the state of our existence. However mis-guided (religion and science) our conclusions are, there are fundamental universal reasons why we have ideas, stories, imagination, creativity and the ability to attempt to apply them, whether as an individual or as an institution. The romantic side would suggest that our thoughts are somewhere real and their potential is realised in someway in the Null:Void.
Maybe the Null:Void is the other multiverses that surround our own or the various dimensions where these conscious models form and interact with our own Universe. Maybe not. Whatever the case, the brain could well have some special property that enables it to connect with the quantum and temporal levels of our reality in ways that we never realised possible.
I acknowledge this is by no means a scientific or referenced piece, although many of the ideas involved are discussed in:
David Deutch
ttp://www.qubit.org/people/david/David.html
Philosophy of Physics
Kronz, Frederick M.
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Douglas R. Hofstadter
Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See
Donald David Hoffman
The Madness that is Religion April 28, 2006
Posted by Mark Mitchell in : Blog, Philosophy , 2 commentsSince the moment I was born until this time now I have never experienced anything that I would class as ‘religious’. When I was a teenager I was quite interested in finding out some kind of truth to our lives. Desperate to find some cohesive meaning to our existence I read various religious texts and explored all kinds of esoteric ideas. Even though some texts have idealistic and interesting takes on our reality the end result was that I was left feeling that there was no evidence or solid truth in anything I read. In fact the majority was confusing, bizarre, esoteric and impossible to apply in any meaningfull way. Some religions, Christianity for example has a fundemental philisophical flaw. I could never understand why God created Satan:
‘Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made.’
If God is meant to be ‘pure’, a perfection, and Satan is his antithesis then how do you explain that Satan is a product of God? God then must be corrupt himself in some way to produce Satan. If Satan reflects absolutely every evil in our world and in human beings and he is a product of God then God himself is worse than Satan as he knowingly unleashes this evil onto the world and corrupts his own creations (Adam and Eve). By default every evil in the world is Gods doing while you could say Satan is a victim of his own creation, God made him evil. This for me is a fundemantal flaw in the Christian philosophy. Using very basic logic the Bible even in its very early stages is flawed and God is nothing more than a selfish thug, killing without mercy and punishing those who love him in an attempt to test their faith. God does not practice what he preaches.
Christianity is not the only religion that has flaws, but I am not writing this to list the many examples of the relationship between religion and the illogical. My simple example is symptomatic of almost all religious texts that I have read, the interesting thing for me in all of these texts is that central to their stories are that beings with supernatural powers entwined with miraculous events play a huge role in defining believers real world. I am not talking metaphore here, lets not let modernisms let religion off by explaining away ridiculous stories as some kind of metaphore or purely as some kind of fable. They were never intended that way, and people have been killed and still are killed over not accepting that religious texts are literally the ‘truth’.
Religion accepts and promotes a form of madness. A fear of nothing except the demons they create. The emphasis rather than on life is actually on death. It is as though death and the ‘afterlife’ have more importance than life itself. I have often considered that religion is a focus for people who refuse to accept the most obvious and self validating reality that life is what you can measure and nothing more. I won’t even entertain a Solopsist argument and David Deutsche sums up the problem of that perspective very well in the Fabric of Reality (a must read). I could rant all day about religion but you would get bored and so would I. I think I have made my point.
