Assignment 5, Suicide

Nov 4th, 2002

Assignment 5, Suicide

Suicide is a morality issue when it comes down to religious dogma and states involved punishments given to people who attempted to commit suicide.  Suicide is seen as good in some cultures and bad in others and it goes from one extreme to the next.  For example in Amsterdam euthanasia is legal because it comes down to issue of personal choice.  I don’t see why a person who wants to die cannot fulfill it by suicide because birth is not a choice and death should be one.  In some cultures, suicides are thought to be courageous and honorable.  In the story of Masada mass suicides was an act of dignity, instead of being captured by enemies and eventually be tortured, suicides is thought to be a chance of freedom. Of course there are many factors that one would argue about suicides or assisted suicides.  In a legal point of view, you are taking a life it doesn’t matter if it is someone else or your own life and it should be illegal.  There should be criteria to justify if suicide is a solution during a certain mental or physical state.

            In the case of a healthcare issue, a terminally ill old man is in pain and he will die with no chance for survival then there is a justification to let the man die in peace or let him die in pain.  It is about ending a suffering he is going through and I think that it is okay for the man to make the choice to have morphine injection.  In this situation the man is hooked up to a machine with morphine dispense only if the man pushes a button to release the dose.  But with similar cases, assisted suicide by physicians even with the patient consent could led to questions such as if the patient is actually sane to make a decision to end his or her life or should family members be involved to participate in making decisions too even if the family disagree with the idea of suicide. 

            With recent assisted suicide cases such as Dr. Jack Kevorkian who assisted a patient with Lou Gehrig’s disease, the doctor was charged with a first degree murder.  The reason why the patient chooses suicide was because he was afraid to die from the disease when it is at its worst.  The patient wants to end his life without pain and Dr. Kevorkian did that by injecting his patient with a lethal dose of controlled substance.  Most would disagree with what Dr. Kevorkian did with helping his patient to die, but if the disease would lead to a quality of life that is undesirable then why can’t the patient choose suicide and also be assisted for a painless death.

              Another argument is from religious point of view about suicide.  Christianity believes suicide is immoral because it violates the desire to live in choosing death to solve a particular problem.  There is responsibility you have to others around you, because if you die it is not just that you are dead, but it affects others. And also the fact that your life was given to you by God and God is the one who can take it away.  On the other end is a Buddhist monk setting himself aflame because of his commitment to his religious belief.  The monk’s action could be viewed as immoral under Christian belief, but yet it is okay from a Buddhist point of view.  The incident happened as a protest to a political regime that the monk as set himself on fire to sacrifice his life to make a prudent point.  From an outsider view it is a disruptive action, but only to those who is not involved in the political turmoil.  If there is any chance that one could interpret the monk’s action to be a noble act in wanting to stop suffering for a particular situation then it fulfilled that point.

            In a situation with a suicide-bomber attacking a busload of civilians verses a American soldier in his act of duty kills himself and Saddam Hussein plus innocent workers, there is no moral distinction between the bomber’s or the soldier’s actions. 

They are both under the same condition where they are doing their job in defense.

I disagree in the fact that the suicide-bomber could be labeled as a terrorist and not the American soldier.  If there is an argument of one action to be bad and one to be good, then the fact of killing is not a moral issue.  It is then about our perspectives that give in to the distinction on the issue of morality.  If you are a part of jihad and their conducts, you will see that what they do are in defense and if you are outsider looking into what the American soldier is doing then he can well be a terrorist to the innocent workers.  

            Suicide is not about morality or immorality, but it is about the point of view that holds the issue of morality.  If suicide can be avoid then it should be a good thing to see life to be something more than just leading to death.  To me it is like saying if a glass is half empty or half full.  There is always a person who would disagree with suicide as an immoral act, but then to what degree should it be considered okay rather than to completely disregard suicide.  I think suicide should be a choice for one to make in regards to their lives and not for people to judge if it is right or wrong. 

Assignment 4, The Experience Machine

October 21st, 2002

Assignment 4, The Experience Machine

The machine would generate the same experiences I am feeling right now.  Why not?  The reason why people want to do things instead of just experiencing what they do is because they want to feel that they are actually living in a tactile way.  Even thought I feel that doing the actual act and thinking about are two separate notions, the machine would make it as one entity.  The machine would construct the experiences for you and you react on them as you think.  In my opinion this is better than reality.  You are able to act on thinking rather than thinking leading to acting on separate frames; the machine will make it happen at the same moment of time.

            I want to go on the machine because I feel that it has the potential of free will.  If those experiences are just construct of the self there should be no barriers in thinking and acting it out.  Living in a reality the construct is built on rules and laws, we all have obligations in relationship to other people around us.  Any desires and wants could be suppressed by responsibilities you hold to your community or family. 

It’s also about going beyond the physical boundaries of the body.  Sometimes thinking may not lead to actually doing because of the limitation of your body.  If the thinking of the experience would also make you feel that you can physically do it then the more the better.  The machine can take the mentality beyond the limitation of the physical world. 

Another thing I like about plugging into the machine is the fact that you can be anyone you want to be.  Why be subjected to stereotypes or judgments of what kind of a person you want to be by other people?  The fact that we want to be seen a certain way is because we have pride to hold ourselves up to be someone labeled as witty, courageous, kind, etc.  It is how we all see each other in having some kind of reputation in playing a role in society.  It is not versatile to be someone labeled as a good person and also be someone labeled as a bad person.  I feel that is it confining.  The machine would not make you be just one personality but a possibility of several personalities. 

Going into what the mind can do is deeper than reality.  The machine would help enhance the mind.  I do not feel that it is a limit because it is man-made because it is what you actually do that is limited.  The machine could create identical reality to one that we are all living in, but it is up to us to go beyond only to have an identical reality.  If you want the same why bother going into the machine.  It is only when you want your mind to go beyond what you can do in reality that makes the machine useful.  It is just like saying it is not the computer that is stupid but the user.  If the user knows what can be done and how to use it to enhance his or her experiences then it is better than reality.  Because you are in fact in control of what you want to experience and it is all programmed into the machine.  If you do not like what you experienced and want something different then change it after two years.  You select to experiences more than you can probably do in reality.  That is the beauty of the machine.

I agree that personal integrity is important.  I do not think that the machine would destroy personal integrity because you have a choice to go on the machine or not.  It is not forced by outside influences.  Unless you are in fact in denial then it would be a problem.  I feel that you need to be aware of what you are doing.  For example, the fact that you want to experience what it is like to be a successful person that doesn’t mean you are lying to yourself.  It is better than getting yourself drunk and hoping for something that you cannot have.  You can have it all with the experience machine you can take all the good experiences and omit the bad ones.

            

Assignment 3, Free Will

October 7^th, 2002

Assignment 3, Free Will

Do we all have in reality the free will to do what we want or is it just an illusion?

The concept of free will is easily understood as we all have a choice to choose if only those choices we make are voluntary rather than forced upon us by other factors.  Yet in the interest of justifying if free will exists there are discrepancies in ones having a belief or exclusion of a belief.  The problem in believing that we all have free will, we must first succumb to religious terms or to certain laws that applies to fulfill the concept of free will.  It is a give and take situation.  If you truly believe in free will that means there are no laws holding your actions back just because you have social obligation with in a community and no praising and no blaming as consequences for your actions.  Another problem is we believe in free will but we still want to have control which also reflects in having responsibility and morality within a social structure and if not we will have anarchy.

Living within a communal group already suggests that we will not have the right to exercise our actions openly.  Society is there to repress certain desires even if it is labeling you as a good person or a bad person.  A good person will do well with in a group and a bad person would be an outcast.  To have free will there would be no differentiations between the good and bad because those actions either good or bad should not be confining with borders.   If there is no difference between good or bad actions then the choices to choose are unlimited.

For example Saint Augustine’s concept of free will derived from his conversion from Manichaeism to Christianity.  In Manichaeism the belief was that the world is structured half good and half evil reflected the idea that there is no free will.  But on the other hand there is free will because a person can be good or evil and it is open to him or her.  Christianity on other hand refuted the idea that evil exist because it is the structure of the world.  Evil in Christianity is about the pleasure of the body.  Augustine claimed from his experience that we all have free will because there are conflicts within the soul to choose the actions to be carried out like a battle between doing evil and doing good.  His believing in the existence of soul draws to conclude his belief in Christianity.  And he believes that God contributed to doing good instead of evil.  If that is true then a Christian’s action would be choices among good deeds rather than bad.  This is already a conflict of free will because it is about moral obligation toward a religion on its social values. 

Another factor is that to have free will one thinks that he or she would have control.  There is in fact no control because free will cannot be thought in a logical manner.  If it is considered to be logical then any actions that a person will take would be a cause and effect.  Some may argue that one action that is taken may not have to do with the next action and the actions could be independent from one another.  The actions could be independent of each other because of time factor.  For example, a person wanting to go to work today would decide that they are not going to work tomorrow.  Those actions seemed independent just from the superficial facts.  But on the other hand what made those choices could be dependent on some experiences of outside influences and also memories. 

In Hans Sluga’s description of the concept of free will, he finds a distinction between the self and the world to be a separate entity.  He further states that it is about resistance and control.  But then if a person is holding back because he or she felt responsible to have a certain control over the self and the world that is already sets a limit of free will.  Even if a person may want to exert a control over the outside world and he or she is not able to do so because of the physical aspect of body then free will does not work in its full potential.  For example, a person’s will is to lift a 10-pound box and that person tries and failed because of his or her physical ability life the box.  Unless we all work within the guidelines that we know we have a limit and we work within the limit then we are able to see free will exist only under those circumstances. 
In other words free will exists because we all feel that we have the choices to choose, but it works only in a context of rules which everyone in a group must agreed to a set of conditions. With that in mind, it is not truly free will, but an illusion because we still want to take responsibility and we want to have control over the self and the world. The problem is that we cannot have both free will and also have control.

Assignment 2, Plato's Cave

September 23^rd, 2002

Assignment 2, Plato’s Cave

            From my immediate memory about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave was in my art theory class.  The “goodness” in term of art is known as the ideal or the truth as compared to everything which is considered representations of the ideal.  Even with “goodness” it could only be in itself a form when compared to something else that is known and understood to be the opposition to the form such as “badness.”  It’s relative to a convention in mass cultural way of thoughts and also in language.  Language holds a representation or an understanding of representation by convention.  One example I had in mind was Rene Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe).  It is a painting with an image of a pipe with ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ written underneath the image of the pipe.  The image of the pipe in truth will not be the realities of a physical object hence the actual pipe because you will not be able to use it.  It’s an image of one particular pipe representing all pipes merely the preference of the artist.  The text works well with the image because the pipe is a form just as language represents another kind of form to communicate. 

            We are prisoners in Plato’s Cave because we are thinkers of sorts.  We draw from the Ideal, but nothing is perfect in reality.  It could also be put in term of what is considered “goodness” which is an illusion to become the ultimate truth that could not be reached.  Because “goodness” is out of the limit and only ideas could slightly touch it.

            After reading Tao-Teh Ching and comparing it to Plato’s Cave, there were some similarities that struck me on the surface. Both are about the balance of life and sharing of wisdom with in a community.  In deeper thoughts they want to make things simple in understanding the world from the grandeur to the minute.  Nature works well with the example of the grandeur workings within where life is structured and how human beings should work with nature of things in harmony.  These thoughts could not be denied because they hold truth within that contains simple facts.

Assignment 1, Zeno's Paradox

September 16^th, 2002

Assignment 1, Zeno’s Paradox

            Zeno’s paradox in short states that for one person to move from point A to point B one must complete half the distance and in order to complete that half a distance one must cover half of the half of the distance covered.  At the end one will not be able to reach the final destination.  The distances that needed to be covered are infinite numbers of points.  It seems logical in mathematics that movement is not possible because if a line were to contain infinite points then there is always the distance in between that would never be covered.  Yet in science an atom is the smallest unit and it is impossible to go smaller than that single unit.  Since Zeno’s also seemed to have omitted the factor of time and making time irrelevant to distance it makes it a paradox. 

            Zeno sided with Parmenides giving the same philosophical argument which is in reaction to refute Pythagoras.  Parmenides believed that the world is like a rock and nothing can be change hence motion is non existence.  If nothing can be changed then does this also apply to man’s destiny or fates? 

            I believe that motion is not an illusion because the concept of time is able to be recorded and everything is relative to time on earth or time that could be recorded in any other methods that is related to the physical world.  This example could be seen in a pair of aging twins when one twin traveled into space and one twin remained on earth.  As the twin in space traveled back to earth he didn’t look as old as the twin who was living on earth in the same amount of earth related time traveled by one twin into space and the other one staying behind.