The Freethinkers' Lounge

Yes, after sharing multitudes of YouTube videos on this blog, I have finally started making videos myself.  You can probably guess what themes they follow.

I had an idea for a mental exercise tonight which my wife and I tried together.  I would recommend attempting this exercise in the most sense deprived state you can easily reach.  After reading each scenario, close your eyes and imagine the scenario, attempting to reproduce the scenario in your mind as you would experience it in reality.

1. Imagine you are standing on a bluff in the twilight of the evening.  The sky is a pastel of orange and pink.  You are looking down into a mossy forest in which a clear spring runs over smooth rocks.
2. Imagine someone speaking to you the sentence, "By George," said Paul as he sat on the John.  Where did my ring go?
3. Imagine you are blindfolded and someone is about to place an unknown treat in your mouth.  When the object is in your mouth, you bite down into a cool, juicy red grape.
4. Like scenario #3, only now someone holds a freshly chopped bowl of sun-ripened strawberries to your nose as you inhale.
5. After a hard day of rock climbing, your muscles are sore, and your legs are heavy with fatigue, so you lower your aching body into a bath of warm, bubbling water.  Water jets massage your legs and back as the vapor envelopes and heats your face.

Now that you have done all these things, I have a few questions.  Which of the scenarios were you able to closely approximate with your imagination, and with which did you have difficulty?  Which was easiest for you and which was the hardest?  Was there any sensory data you could not closely approximate at all?

If it helps, attempt to rerun the exercise with more familiar topics, making sure to especially emphasize one sense per scenario.  Sing a song with your mind, imagine the face of a friend, do whatever you think will work.

I am interested in your results, as I found my wife and I had rather different experiences.  We mutually declared that audio data was the easiest sense to reproduce in our imaginations.  We were not particularly surprised by this result, since we both primarily think in language.  I had a considerably easier time with visualization than she did.  She said that images tend to fade in and out in her mind as if she cannot hold onto them, whereas I can pretty readily reproduce anything described to me when given adequate detail.  She was able to taste a doughnut (we used a doughnut in our scenario) within a few seconds while I could only stimulate my appetite without actually tasting anything.  I also could not imagine a smell vividly enough to experience it, though she said she was able to after expending some effort.  She also reported success in imagining the texture of blades of grass on her fingertips, while I seem to be able to reproduce very slight sensations in temperature and little if any sensation in texture.

So what about you?  What senses can you experience using the influence of your imagination?

I have noticed almost all animals which we humans regard as cute are vertebrates.  From an evolutionary standpoint, I suppose this makes sense, considering we are vertebrates so other vertebrates will more closely resemble us (or more importantly, our babies).  Well today, I want to challenge the norm, channel LBeeeze a bit, and submit for your consideration some cute mollusks and arthropods.

I have recently been looking into the philosophy of nihilism, and I have to say, I am a bit confused by it.  My confusion mainly stems from the wide range of definitions I have found.  Nihilism appears to encompass a very large spectrum of topics, and here, I will attempt to explain it as I understand it.

It seems, at the very least, that the statement that nihilism is the rejection of all beliefs or a "belief in nothing" is inaccurate.  I was ignorant of this fact until just a short time ago, and have before follied in describing it as such.  As I have begun to educate myself on the topic, I have come to suspect that I may very well appropriately be described as a philosophical nihilist.

Nihilism seems to have in roots in a form of civil disobedience in Russia.  The primary concern of the Nihilists (note capitalization in this instance denotes Nihilism as a political movement) was to challenge the status quo through the rejection of conformity to societal norms.  To me, their ideas were comparable to freethought in that they rejected tradition and authority as valid justification for formulating beliefs.

Modern nihilism seems to retain some of these qualities, though it does not carry the violent and terroristic practices of the Russian political movement.  Instead, philosophical nihilism is a rejection of objective morality (and more), or perhaps more accurately, an acceptance that morality is a subjective human construct.  As such, nihilists seek to reduce the presence of superfluous moral codes within society, arguing that such societies should be restructured, or in extreme cases, destroyed.

Because of the history of Russian Nihilism and due to nihilists' rejection of objective morality, philosophical nihilism has been unfairly attached to violence and despair.  It is true that in addition to rejecting objective morality nihilism rejects the concept of an objective purpose to existence, and I have heard several philosophers, namely Christian apologists, equate the lack of an objective morality to an absence of morality altogether.  This argument, however, ignores the existence of subjective morality and subjective purpose, which as far as I can tell, are possibilities which are open to nihilists.  Indeed, in my estimation, the nihilist must necessarily accept subjective judgments to some degree, and I would even argue that subjectivity is of tantamount importance to the nihilistic perspective.

The importance of subjectivity to the nihilistic philosophy seems evident in that nihilism entails a form of extreme scepticism.  I need to make a brief aside for a moment, because I am going to adopt a new convention here in The Lounge.  I have talked about scientific skepticism (or skeptical inquiry) very often on this blog, but I have always referred to it simply as "skepticism."  In the future, when I write "scepticism," I will be referring to philosophical scepticism.  Both scientific skepticism and philosophical scepticism place emphasis on doubt, but whereas skeptical inquiry concerns itself with seeking empirical evidence necessary to rationally justify truth claims, philosophical scepticism is concerned with doubting the very nature of truth itself.

Scepticism is based on questioning the validity of human sense datum, a topic I have addressed before.  Essentially, because we cannot affirm the accuracy of our sense datum, sceptics argue that we cannot truly discern objective truths about the universe.  Scepticism further highlights the problem of truth claims by asking whether or not we as individuals can legitimately claim to have experienced the universe as it is.  The argument is that we do not experience the universe directly, we only experience the universe through our perception of it.  Furthermore, our perceptions are inherently subjective.  One person may describe a room as warm while another may describe it as cool.  A blind person and a deaf person experience the universe in very different ways, and are therefore likely to describe it in very different terms.  Similarly, a person with color blindness receives the same light frequencies as a typical person, but their brains interpret the light differently.  Synesthesiacs experience crossovers in their senses, meaning, for example, that a note played on a piano may cause that person to experience a certain color.

The subjective nature of our senses, combined with the impossibility of affirming our senses' accuracy, means we cannot make truly objective truth claims according to nihilists.  In fact, the radical form of scepticism within nihilism may reject the concept of knowledge entirely.  Some philosophers have offered objections to this claim which are worth considering, so perhaps I will address them at a later date.

All this said, if nihilists reject objectivism categorically—no objective purpose, morality, or truth—then all that remains within nihilistic understanding is subjective.  If a nihilist is to argue, for example, that societies too heavily imbued with subjective morality should be reconstructed, the nihilist is making a subjective value judgment.  Some would undoubtedly argue that this creates a problem for the nihilist, since he is suggesting a shift in subjective morality which cannot be said, according to the ethical nihilist, to be legitimately preferable above current standards.  I do not see that this necessarily is a severe problem for the nihilist, as their judgment, subjective though it may be, is still reasonably consistent with their world view.  In this way, ethical nihilists face a similar conundrum that moral relativists face.

Nihilism, unsurprisingly, has varying levels of acceptance amongst those who espouse it.  In fact, nihilism has a number of subcategories (a few I mentioned above) which can be individually accepted.  The natural question to ask now is probably why I focus so heavily on objective truth if I am willing to consider nihilism and accept the proposition that I cannot truly lay stake to objective truth.  I will get to that next time, wherein, amongst other things, I will attempt to clarify what I mean when I talk about truth.

Note: All I have said here I leave entirely open to scrutiny from someone who better understands nihilism.  Again, above I am attempting to frame nihilism as I understand it, though I may have erred in places.  If anyone would care to expound upon and/or correct what I have said, please do.  I would love to hear from a more informed person.

A few of my subscriptions have posted some good evolution videos recently.  Enjoy.

Following up on my last post, I recall Pat Robertson is rather fond of the idea of his god smiting the non-Christian.

November 2005, from a fair & balanced news source.
Robertson: God May Smite Down Town That Voted Out Anti-Evolution School Board

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.  —  Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson warned residents of a rural Pennsylvania town Thursday that disaster may strike there because they "voted God out of your city" by ousting school board members who favored teaching intelligent design.

All eight Dover, Pa., school board members up for re-election were defeated Tuesday after trying to introduce "intelligent design" — the belief that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power — as an alternative to the theory of evolution.

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God. You just rejected him from your city," Robertson said on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club."

Eight families had sued the district, claiming the policy violates the constitutional separation of church and state. The federal trial concluded days before Tuesday's election, but no ruling has been issued.

Later Thursday, Robertson issued a statement saying he was simply trying to point out that "our spiritual actions have consequences."

"God is tolerant and loving, but we can't keep sticking our finger in his eye forever," Robertson said. "If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them."

Robertson made headlines this summer when he called on his daily show for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

In October 2003, he suggested that the State Department be blown up with a nuclear device. He has also said that feminism encourages women to "kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

And who could forget this little gem from the late Jerry Falwell which Robertson so enthusiastically endorsed.

Words fail me.