Optimific

Something really interesting from lecture today.

The definition of Optimific is productive of the best outcome which would mean that Optimal might have the same idea. Not really. The definition of Optimal is most favorable or desirable. Optimific refers to the best outcome but does not have to be refer to best consequences. Interesting.

One Over Many

Greek had a long standing “one over many problem” as they attempt to find a way to utilize 1 word for many different objects that is very different. Plato then came up with this very interesting idea on the Theory of Forms. Philosophers alone were said to have knowledge of Forms. If they study and understand Form, they have attained true knowledge. As without true knowledge everything is only belief and its only what the world appears to be. Forms are said to be universal ideas; unchanging, perfect and eternal. This did reflect Parmenides idea of IT. However, in Forms it doesn’t have to have all qualities.

Lets consider the Universal concept of a chair. Particular objects are said to owe existence to Forms. This reflect the world of Heraclitus, the World of appearances. The universal concept of chair doesn’t change even the chair undergoing process of change. We might have a different idea of the chair in our mind now but its still called a chair. Particular objects are then said to be mere imitations of the Form object. I think this is really amazing as how Plato managed to come up with this concept at that particular point of time given the limited resources and environment that he was in.

“None shall past through this door not knowing geometry” is supposed to be at the entrance of Plato's Academy which i thought was really interesting as Mathematics was considered so important to Plato at that time. Another example would be Triangularity. We can can understand triangle individually as we can measure every single triangle but we only know those that we have seen. However, we know something about Form triangle which helped us understand every triangle like interior angles adding up to 180 degree. All the triangles will then have them otherwise they do not participate in form triangle. This meant that Forms provide necessary condition in objects and helped solve the "one over many problems" in some ways.

Lottery Sex

In the Republic, Sex based on Lottery (PLANNED LOTTERY) will be enforced. This is due to the fact that the Republic was supposed to be a perfect society so they had to bred the best. However this leads to the same few people will end up always breeding while some will never get the chance to breed. Children from sex out of the usual lottery will be left to die for best of society. These children from the lottery sex will then be left in the care of the state. All parents would come together to celebrate events in their “child’s” life like birth months, successes, graduation, etc. 

State raised children help to dismantling of a "mine – yours mentality" and this would strengthen communal bond of the Republic. This leads to people caring more about each other. However, personally i feel that this society will never be possible. Since sex was planned as according to the Republic random couplings does not lead to the best offspring, children belongs basically to only a small group of "best bred" as not everyone will have the chance to have their own babies due to the lottery. Therefore, maybe if only 1 of the thousands of kids are mine, i would care less as i will never even know if my kid is in there. I feel that this "perfect" society will never be plausible and definitely will not exist as i feel that reducing the mine your mentality might not bring the best out of the citizens. 

Metal Myth

Plato feels that there’s genetic elitism in the Republic and therefore implies that some are born more intelligent than others. The Guardians are the group that will defend the Republic is the face of danger. The Guardians undergoes tests of Character and Loyalty. They must have a character strong enough to do what is right rather than delude that something is right. This leads us to what we had learned earlier that; Knowledge is not something gain but something born with.

Propaganda is heavily emphasized in the Republic. Everyone in the Republic is taught that they are born with a certain metal that is in the soul. Guardians has a golden soul while Artisans have bronze soul. They were taught not to associate with each other from young so that they will not tarnish their soul. After some time they are accustomed to not associating with each other. Would this really make a PERFECT society?

Propaganda is often intentionally used to misinterpretation facts to achieve some kind of goal. This lie help achieve some kind of character for the Guardians but will this make the Republic a perfect society when the Guardians and Artisans do all associate with each other? This will lead to segregation and the communal bond in the society will be weakened after all the effort to strength it by reducing the mine your mentality.

Apology

Socrates was a master of rhetoric and he goes to marketplace and talks to everyone. He talks to everyone and makes them feel stupid and therefore everyone was really irritated by him and finds him totally annoying. People wanted to teach him a lesson and decided to press charges against him.

A friend had gone to the Oracle of Apollo, the God of truth and knowledge, at Delphi in search of the wisest man and got his answer: Socrates. His friend returned and told Socrates about it. 

Socrates: That’s bullshit. I am stupid. I don’t know anything. He then scoots off to find wiser men around.

Socrates was charged by Meletus for 3 charges.
Corrupting Youths
Not believing in the God of State
Practicing a false religion

Socrates poor defense
Meletus dealt frivolously with serious matters
Meletus irresponsibly brought him to court
Meletus professed concern about things he doesn’t care about

Socrates: I am a bad influence on the youth? Who is good?
Meletus: Everyone else except you.

Socates: Lets take a horse and trainer analogy. So everyone is a good horse trainer? 

He manages to show that Meletus professed concern about things he doesn’t care about. However, when innuendo is used here, it could go completely undetected by some jury members who was not familiar with the hidden meaning, and would find nothing odd about the sentence. However, some of the jury members would have gotten it that he was trying to say they were stupid and the jury has time to talk to each other after that. Not a very good idea is it?

Socrates believed that even if he was corrupting the youth, he wasn’t doing it willingly and therefore Meletus should have just pulled him aside and told him not to do it again. He thus feels that Meletus irresponsibly brought him to court.

He felt Meletus dealt frivolously with serious matters as how can someone that does not believe in the God of State, an atheist, practice a false religion? Contradictory isn’t it? Socrates then rests his defense being totally not apologetic and being his usual annoying self.

Jury returns with guilty verdict. The accusers and Socrates gets to decide the punishment and the Jury will vote on it again.

The accusers suggest a death sentence as they want it to be too harsh so Socrates can get off easy with the punishment that he suggests. No one wanted Socrates to die and they barely wanted to teach him a lesson. However Socrates suggested his punishment, “How do you punish a person that rescue the Greek Society? Reward me then.” He felt that he was helping the youth and being a role model of an examined life. As Athens was degraded by Sophist that believed that truth was relative. He also felt that he was not going to stop philosophizing as God commanded him to do so and no laws against it will make it strong enough for him to stop.

“The unexamined life is not worth living”

A friend of Socrates walked up to him and told him that it was a bad idea and told him to suggest a fine and that they will pay the fine for him. Socrates told the jury, “my friend has suggested a fine and that he was going to pay it for me.” Jury returns with death sentence. Socrates was then placed in prison as there was a ship on religious pilgrimage and no one is supposed to be executed then. People had arranged for Socrates escape and the prison, a hole in a cliff, had no strict guards or locks that prevented him from doing so. He chose the death penalty and drank the hemlock.

Euthyphro’s Dilemma

Socrates and Euthyphro are having a conversation about piety. Euthyphro believes that he knows the meaning of piety. He accused his father of murder and is bring his father to court. Sounds pious? Anyway his father has caught a slave stealing and had tied the slave up and left him in a ditch while he goes to press charges on his slave. When he returned, the slave had died in the ditch. Euthyphro believed that it was wrong and decided that he has to press charges against his father. 5 definitions of piety that Euthyphro brought us through that lead us nowhere.

Definition 1 - Piety is prosecuting unjust people.

Definition by example = bad as it will be uninformative due to the simple fact that pious acts doesn’t always just involve unjust people.

Definition 2 - What’s pleasing to God.

However, this leads to internal inconsistence. There’s different Gods and they what 1 God agree might be disagreed by another God. Contradictory isn’t it?

Definition 3 - What all Gods Love

Wait. Pious acts are loved because they are pious or are they pious because that are loved.

Euthyphro believed that God loves the acts therefore they are pious. The search for the definition continues. All pious acts are just/moral acts but not all just acts are pious acts. Therefore, pious acts are a subset of just acts.

Definition 4 - Pious acts care for the Gods

Socrates: Trainer and horse kind of care? Doesn’t this makes God beneath us?

Socrates: Master and slave care? Where we care for our master?

Socrates: This leads to what do we help Gods do?

This eventually leads to a lot of other problems like

Socrates: What are functions of Gods? What does Gods do? Purpose of Gods?

Euthyphro eventually gives up this trend of thought and gave a new definition instead.

Definition 5 - Praying to the Gods and sacrificing things are pious acts

Another definition by example. Great.

Socrates: What are we giving to the Gods?

Euthyphro: Honor and Praise

Socrates: Why does God wants these things? Is it because they love it?

Looks like we are back to acts are loved because they are pious or are they pious because that are loved.

I got to go. See you later. What a state of confusion…

Much ado about nothing

Parmenides believed that nothing changes and that he was also one of the first of those who used deductive argument in his philosophical work.

That it is and it is not possible for it not to be.

That it is not and it is necessary for it not to be.

He came up with a really cool concept of nothingness: that nothingness does not exist because if nothingness exists, it is something. So something like a pen cannot cease to exist as well. If the pen ceases to exist, the pen has become nothing and nothingness has come to existence which is not possible as nothingness cannot exist. His idea revolves around the fundamental argument that nothing cannot exist.

He also believed in no change, no difference and no motion based on his argument of the inexistence of nothingness. If I were to change, from being dumb to smart, I would have lost the quality of dumbness which results again in nothing coming to existence and this can’t happen! If we were to have differences, you being smarter than I am, you would bear a quality smarter which I don’t and nothingness again has come to existence as I lack the quality of being smarter. Oh wait, doesn’t that make you and me the same? Which we all know is quite fallacious, if you think about it. Motion is then also not possible, because in order to move there must be nothing there to obstruct me, but there’s no such thing as nothing. What am I talking about? We can therefore only think of things that exist.

When I talk about Mario, do you know who’s Mario? You do, don’t you? But Mario doesn’t exist, does he? I never knew he existed. Then what are you thinking about? I thought I just said that we can only think of things that exist. Parmenides believed that that was IT and everything was just IT. That’s IT for now.

Moved?

Zeno of Elea, a Greek philosopher, lived some 2500 years ago. Zeno’s Paradoxes dealt with a type of argument called reductio ad absurdum which is also known as proof by contradiction. He argued against plurality due to the fact that he believed that for an object there must be a point that protrudes out more than the rest and another point on that point would then further protrude out more than the rest this would go on ad infinitum. Therefore, this would lead to an infinite mass.

Zeno’s arguments against motion included the race course, Achilles and the tortoise, the flying arrow and the stadium. Many were baffled by his ideas, although they were never convinced that it was true, they had to accept the conclusion due to the fact that it was a proof by contradiction and some have yet to find a reasonable fault or premises to refute the deductive argument.

The idea of the race course paradox was that Zeno believed it was not possible to traverse a race course. He believed that in order to run a race course, one has to first run to the midpoint, half the distance, before eventually getting to the end of the race course. However, in order to reach the midpoint, one has to travel half the midpoint. This will eventually lead to an infinite number of half distances. Zeno believed that it was impossible to complete an infinite task in a finite time; hence he concluded it that movement was not possible in light of that.

Zeno’s second argument was the Achilles and the tortoise. He believed that the slower runner would never be overtaken by the faster in a race if the slower runner has a head start. He reasoned that in order for the faster to overtake the slower, he has to first catch up to the slower before being able take a lead. However, when he catches up to the point the slower runner was at, the slower runner has already moved a short distance forward in the time taken to catch up. This continues and the faster runner will never be able to catch up with the slower runner, because the former will always be behind the latter, albeit by a small distance each time.

Zeno’s arrow argument states that an arrow that is flying is actually stationary. He believed that it is at rest as it is not shifted by any degree out of place equal to its own dimension. At any particular instant, the arrow is in the place it occupies at that particular instant. He then drew the conclusion the arrow is not moving at any time during the flight, since the so called movement of the arrow consists of an infinity number of instants.

Through modern science and mathematics, we have been able to prove that movement is indeed possible. Common sense tells us that motion is possible. After all, Zeno himself probably walked home everyday. What he left for us is probably the idea that reasonable assumptions can lead to absurd conclusions, as his paradoxes did. He contributed much to logic and philosophical research today, but personally, I don’t find his stories very moving.

IT

Some really interesting concepts and food for thought from last week’s reading was reinforced by tonight’s lecture.

Xenophanes defined the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge. Epistemology is the study of knowledge and it advocates that knowledge can only be attained through Justification, Truth and Belief (JTB). Justifying that something is true, believing that it is true and it turns out to be true, that’s knowledge. Therefore, everything that we do is based on hypotheses. Without any of the factors, we would not be able to “fabricate” knowledge. Xenophanes also thought that God is perfect. This would mean that he is at a perfect spot and he does not move. If God has to move to change his position, the act of him making a change could be translated into a flaw as imperfection was the impetus for the change. Of course, this is assuming that God is omnipotent and all of him thinks, sees and hears from where he is. This concept ties in well with the phrase “change for the better” I guess. When we all make a conscious effort to change a part of us, or to change something, it always stems out of the desire to improve. The converse is rarely true. No one changes with the intent of deteriorating.

The really interesting part from tonight’s lecture was on the conundrum of identity. We were given the scenario of a ship of Theseus. Let's call it Ship A. Ship A circumnavigated the world and replaces all the planks, sails and nails as it goes around the world. Ship A returns to the port. Is this the same ship that it was when it left the port? There is a second scenario. Ship A went on a tour around the world. Ship B follows Ship A and it tours the world together with Ship A. Whenever Ship A replaces something, Ship B keeps every single thing that Ship A replaces: planks, sails and nails. Ship B now returns to the port and uses everything that was collected from the trip to build up a new ship. Which is Ship A now?

There are 2 theories to support this; namely the Mereological theory of identity (you are the same if you have the same parts) and the Spatio-Temporal Continuity theory (you are the same if you maintain continuity through time, even if constituent pieces change). I am skewed towards the Spatio-Temporal Continuity theory. I believe that Ship A is still Ship A in the second scenario. Even though another ship was built with the disposed parts of Ship A, it does not assume the identity of Ship A due to the fact that the Ship A did not have an intermission in continuity. When the parts are disposed, they lose their identity, until their new owners come along. When the parts are made into a new ship, they then take the identity of the new ship. The Mereological theory is tantamount to having organ transplant patients change their identities to that of their donors; unheard of, and bordering on ludicrous. However, hearing both theories gave me a better perspective of where the other train of thought is coming from. I think neither theory is wrong and that they both bear some element of truth, depending on how you look at it.

The deductive argument that Parmenides came up with is really interesting and I have yet to find a false premises to prove that a conclusion is false. This entire concept was really profound and hard to grasp.

That it is not and it is necessary for it not to be.

The concept of nothing and nothingness. Nothingness doesn’t exist; otherwise it would be called something. If something were to cease to exist, it would become nothing. This would mean that nothing has come to existence and we had earlier determined that nothingness cannot exist.

That it is and it is not possible for it not to be.

If something exists, it will always exist. This leads to implications that denies the existence of change (to change results in a loss of a certain quality and a quality cannot disappear), motion (to move, nothing must be there and nothingness cannot exist) and differences (differences would mean a lack of quality in another). In my humblest opinion, the theory surely cannot be all encompassing. We do know that mass cannot be created or destroyed, so change can exist if we are referring to an object, because the mass is transferred to another form of mass. However, if we are talking about something intangible, like a quality, how does one classify the ‘disappearance’ of something intangible? Also, motion does not necessarily mean that nothing must be there in order to move. Motion can take place when there is something there to block, however, what does not take place is displacement. Once again, differences exist not necessarily because one exudes a quality that another doesn’t. Qualities are relative, and different people have varying degrees of that quality. For example, if I am smarter than the boy next door is, it doesn’t mean he lacks my intellectual capacity. It just means he has a watered down capacity, as compared to me. In this case, differences can exist.

With all these theories jamming up my brain, there is no more space for anything else now. Nothing can fill up my brain now. Then again, nothing doesn’t exist, does it?

Realism

Off the cuff, here are a couple of thoughts and ideas that totally blew me off in tonight's philosophy lecture.

Anaximenes and Occam's Razor both advocate that the simplest explanation is probably the right one. With that theory in place, Anaximenes came to a conclusion that everything originates from air and figured that it is through the processes of rarefaction and condensation, that air becomes the following elements: fire, wind, water and earth. He felt that his theory was better and more accurate compared to Anaximander's, due to the fact that his explanation only consisted of 1 item while Anaximander's theory consisted of 5 items: fire, wind, water, earth and apeiron. Anaximenes was inclined to subscribe to the notion of simplicity, rather than complicated theories. Perhaps in life, it would make so much easier if we believed in the simplest of explanations. However, one has to reconcile the multitude of intricacies that come with everything, which are simply, not that simple in nature. Believing in the simplest explanations definitely simplifies things, but it may not always be right.

I am an engineering major, and hence naturally, most of my thoughts are ruled by science and logic. I believe that naturally, I am more of an Empirist, (best kind of knowledge is experience by senses and experiment) and the idea of Rationalists (no need for senses. by reason) is totally new to me. The idea of Realism is also foreign to me; that intellectual "things" are considered to be real objects and have truth of independence of human existence. The idea of that if a tree falls in the wood, it does not make a sound unless there is a receiver of the sound. In other words, sound does not exist unless it’s perceived. When a tree falls in the wood, sound waves are generated but it is not a sound unless there’s someone there to perceive the sound. It is a very abstract theory that disregards science, or common sense. Though my thoughts are very much skewed towards the scientific side, I am quite receptive to this new concept. After all, in all things, there is a giving end, and there’s the receiving end at the other side of the spectrum. When the receiving end is non-existent, whatever is being given out is inconsequential?

I may be blogging all these thoughts down here, but if there is no one to read what I’ve penned here, the blog doesn’t really count for much, does it?

Pythagoras

I had my first class in Philosophy last week and it was rather enriching. I learnt that the word "philosophy” means the love of wisdom. Prof Wayne shed some light on the topic of Philosophy; a subject that has eluded me all these years. Prof Wayne also told us more about himself as well. I was reading the assigned reading for the week and I felt somewhat inspired and amazed by what the ancient philosophers said. In the reading, I gained some insight about Pre-Socratics, Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes and Pythagoras.

Thales came up with a very interesting theory that caught my attention. The theory revolves around water, and he believed that our earth rests on water. He also believed the "quakes" that the earth experiences are a result of the water movement, which I thought was intriguing. In my heart I was thinking, “How could someone conceive such a revolutionary concept at that point of time when there was little or practically no science at all?” Although we now know that the theory holds no truth, we cannot deny that his idea probably served as a precursor to our plate tectonic theories today. We know that modern day "quakes" are due to plate movements and the plates can be said to rest on magma, somewhat similar to the “water” that Thales mentioned. Hence, in that sense, his theory did hold some water (pun intended).

I had learned the Pythagoras theorem before and have been using it since algebra came into my life. I use the theorem for most of my math classes, but it never occurred to me that the Pythagoras theorem was found by Pythagoras himself! I had always thought that someone much later on discovered it and named it after him. Anyway, it is really inspiring how he managed to come up with that given the limited resources and technology of the ancient times. 10 is the very nature of number as all Greeks and barbarians alike count up to 10 and then revert again to the unit and that the power of number 10 that lies in the number 4 are really interesting ideas. 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10, if 1 exceeds the tetrad (number 4), 1 will exceed 10 too. I would have never have thought of something like that. So he said that 1 will make up the number 10 and the power of 10 lies in 4. It is mind baffling and amazing, how these ancient thinkers could come up with such brilliant theories that were way beyond their time.

All these make me wonder what I could have come up with, had I lived in those days. In mean time, I will continue to mull over those theories. If philosophy means the love of wisdom, I couldn’t agree more. I love feeling wiser with all these newfound knowledge.