The Cave

When Bacon lists his mental impediments to truth, he includes both the Idols of the Tribe and Cave (or Den in some translations). These are the errors and misconceptions contained in the human state, either shared with everyone (the tribe) or unique to oneself (the cave). His words echoed Plato (Bacon regarded the time of the Ancient Greeks as one of the few times where societal progress had been made), who almost 2000 years earlier had described the majority of humanity as prisoners in a cave who regarded shadows as reality. Plato included this Allegory of the Cave in The Republic to describe the state of the unenlightened human race. The 2000 years from Plato to Bacon were apparently not enough to correct these errors, which are in fact still relevant today.

Mumford and Sons, a British folk band, can be considered modern-day "philosophers." A popular song from their debut album is titled "The Cave":



Marcus Mumford asks someone (maybe a woman he has fallen out of favor with) to "Now let me at the truth / Which will refresh my broken mind." He seems to have realized that he has been living in a constrained (or determined) environment and that he is faced with mental impediments, both personal and societal, to the truth. When he continues, "Because I need freedom now / And I need to know how / To live my life as it's meant to be," his desire for a more enlightened life becomes clear. Surely, the metaphor of an enclosing cave is still applicable today. However, with the recent development of a philosophy of technology, the errors of the cave may have taken on a different meaning. Instead of being determined by ignorance, as was the case in Bacon's past, we are now faced with the determinisms of technology itself. The pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. Bacon postulated that scientific discovery would get rid of the Idols, but they seem to have resurfaced. Is there a middle ground? Will we ever be "refreshed"?

World of Warcraft: A legal drug?

World of Warcraft, otherwise known as "WOW", is a MMO (massive multiplayer online) video game. This game is the home to over 12 million people worldwide. World of Warcraft is a game where you choose a certain character, level this character to a certain level, and compete against other people to have the best character of your choosing. Not only does World of Warcraft involve you competing against other people, it allows you to create guilds, or social groups online to try and become one of the top guilds on the server. In order to play this game, you must pay not only for the game but also for all the expansions and the $15 monthly payments.

The past few discussions in class mentioned how technology limited our freedom and how we are just too blind sometimes to realize it. World of Warcraft I believe is a perfect example of this. Video games are one of technologies greatest discoveries and greatest downfalls. Video games are a source of entertainment that can be used properly on a daily basis to release stress, socialize with friends, and to simply have fun.

The downside to video games is that they are very addictive, much like a drug; the more often and longer you play video games, the more addicting and harder to quit they are. I singled out World of Warcraft for the fact that it just so happens to be one of the biggest multiplayer games online as well as one of the most known throughout gamers and non gamers. World of Warcraft is a mythical world within this one, allowing us humans to be whatever we want to be and because we belong to "the tribe", humans always want to be on top, and to be on top in "WOW" requires you to play more than your opponent(s). This playing more could consist of hours - months of lost time that a gamer in "WOW" will never be able to recount for or be proud of. To get and stay on top of everyone else starts making this game transform from a form of entertainment into a job, something that at times, only a bathroom or food break will relieve you from. For some gamers, their life is World of Warcraft and their everyday "real-life" is just the dream. This ruins school work, sleeping patterns, outdoor activities, friendships, relationships, and etc. World of Warcraft has even been called the "Warcraft Widow Maker" in an article known as "The Times". So is playing this game really an act of freedom during your "free-time", or is every gamer participating in this just a bunch of mindless zombies giving their lives to the creators of World of Warcraft? Addictive, ruining relationships, wasting lives, loss of real/dream world: sounds very similar to that of a drug.

Here is the article the talks about the "Warcraft Widow"
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/relationships/article5054851.ece

South Park: A Look into the Future

South Park is a cartoon known for its satire and its ability to push current events to the limit. On episode, "Go God Go", it looks into the future and what it may become. I can't post the video since South Park is copyrighted but there is a link below to a clip of the episode (you can watch the whole thing but some parts are vulgar for TMC standards). Basically Cartman freezes himself because he can't wait any longer for the Nintendo Wii to come out. In doing so he is sent into the future where everyone on earth is Atheist and rely solely on science and rationality. With no religion and maximum technology, there is nothing left for people to argue about except what to call their atheist divisions. This almost seems like a plausible thing way way way into the future when technology is our only way of life. Whether there is a higher being or not, there is no way to prove or disprove it, making this episode seem very plausible (not to the extent of otters talking but the fact that everyone on earth will be atheist one far off day).





http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/155423/atheist-war

Bacon's statement about technological progress being looked at as moral progress is a very debatable statement. It seems that the more technology presented to us the more opportunities we are given to be immoral. Moral progress would be understanding right and wrong and choosing to do right. War technology is used to protect but is used endlessly to kill one another. Cell phones are for making calls when necessary but many times are used to contact people we shouldn't, text and drive harming others on the road, and send pictures we know we shouldn't. Computers are meant for quick access to information and people but they allow children to meet strangers, and allows us to look up inappropriate and illegal material. With every technology created, there is a way to misuse it, and if there is a way to misuse it, humans will. Not all and maybe not even most of us fall into this group of people who use technology in an immoral way. So I'd say technological progress isn't necessarily moral progress because it is not helping humans choose between right and wrong. Technological progress is a positive progress allowing us quicker access to information, people, results, and safety. But the morality of it depends on how it is used by each person.

Another Intriguing Post from the World Question Center

Try these for yourself: 

From Richard Nisbett (posted on the World Question Center website)

Social Psychologist, Co-Director, Culture and Cognition Program, University of Michigan; Author, Intelligence and How to Get It

"Graceful" SHA's

1. A university needs to replace its aging hospital. Cost estimates indicate that it would be equally expensive to remodel the old hospital vs. to demolish it and build a new one from scratch. The main argument offered by the proponents of the former is that the original hospital had been very expensive to build and it would be wasteful to simply demolish it. The main argument by the proponents of a new hospital is that a new hospital would inevitably be more modern than a remodeled one. Which seems wiser to you — remodel or build a new hospital?

2. David L., a high school senior, is choosing between two colleges, equal in prestige, cost and distance from home. David has friends at both colleges. Those at College A like it from both intellectual and personal standpoints. Those at College B are generally disappointed on both grounds. But David visits each college for a day and his impressions are quite different from those of his friends. He meets several students at College A who seem neither particularly interesting nor particularly pleasant, and a couple of professors give him the brushoff. He meets several bright and pleasant students at College B and two different professors take a personal interest in him. Which college do you think David should go to?

3. Which of the cards below should you turn over to answer to determine whether the following rule has been violated or not? "If there is a vowel on the front of the card then there is an odd number on the back."

"If there is a vowel on the front of the card then there is an odd number on the back."

U

K

3

8

Some considerations about each of these questions

Question 1: If you said that the university should remodel on the grounds that it had been expensive to build the old hospital you have fallen into the "sunk cost trap" SHA identified by economists. The money spent on the hospital is irrelevant — it's sunk — and has no bearing on the present choice. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman pointed out that people's ability to avoid such traps might be helped by a couple of thought experiments like the following:

"Imagine that you have two tickets to tonight's NBA game in your city and that the arena is 40 miles away. But it's begun to snow and you've found out that your team's star has been injured and won't be playing. Should you go or just throw away the money and skip it?" To answer that question as an economist would, ask yourself the following question: Suppose you didn't have tickets to the game and a friend were to call you up and say that he has two tickets to tonight's game which he can't use and asks if you would like to have them. If the answer is "you've got to be kidding, it's snowing and the star isn't playing," then the answer is you shouldn't go. That answer shows you that the fact that you paid good money for the tickets you have is irrelevant — their cost is sunk and can't be retrieved by doing something you don't want to do anyway. Avoidance of sunk cost traps is a religion for economists, but I find that a single college course in economics actually does little to make people aware of the sunk cost trap. It turns out that exposure to a few basketball-type anecdotes does a lot.

Question 2: If you said that "David is not his friends; he should go to the place he likes," then the SHA of "the law of large numbers" has not been sufficiently salient to you. David has one day's worth of experiences at each; his friends have hundreds. Unless David thinks his friends have kinky tastes he should ignore his own impressions and go to College A. A single college course in statistics increases the likelihood of invoking LLN. Several courses in statistics make LLN considerations almost inevitable.

Question 3: If you said anything other than "turn over the U and turn over the 8," psychologists Wason and Johnson-Laird have shown that you would be in the company of 90% of Oxford students. Unfortunately, you — and they — are wrong. The SHA of the logic of the conditional has not guided your answer. "If P then Q is satisfied by showing that the P is associated with a Q and the not-Q is not associated with a P. A course in logic actually does nothing to make people better able to answer questions such as number 3. Indeed, a Ph.D. in philosophy does nothing to make people better able to apply the logic of the conditional to simple problems like Question 3 or meatier problems of the kind one encounters in everyday life.

Some SHAs apparently are "graceful" in that they are easily inserted into the cognitive toolbox. Others appear to be clunky and don't readily fit. If educators want to improve people's ability to think, they need to know which SHAs are graceful and teachable and which are clunky and hard to teach. An assumption of educators for centuries has been that formal logic improves thinking skills — meaning that it makes people more intelligent in their everyday lives. But this belief may be mistaken. (Bertrand Russell said, almost surely correctly, that the syllogisms studied by the monks of medieval Europe were as sterile as they were.) But it seems likely that many crucially important SHAs, undoubtedly including some which have been proposed by this year's Edge contributors, are readily taught. Few questions are more important for educators to study than to find out which SHAs are teachable and how they can be taught most easily.

A Neuroscientist on Francis Bacon's Four Idols

From the World Question Center Website:

A meditation on Bacon's four idols by Ernst Poppel

Neuroscientist, Chairman, Human Science Center and Department of Medical Psychology, Munich University; Author, Mindworks

A Cognitive Toolkit Full Of Garbage

To get rid of garbage is essential, also of mental garbage. Cognitive toolkits are filled with such garbage, simply because we are victims of ourselves. We should regularly empty this garbage can, or in case we enjoy to sit in garbage, we better check how "shorthand abstractions" (SHA's) limit our creativity (certainly an SHA). Why is the cognitive toolkit filled with garbage?

Let us look back in history (SHA): Modern science (SHA) can be said to have started in 1620 with "Novum Organum" ("New Instrument") by Francis Bacon. It should impress us today that his analysis (SHA) begins with a description (SHA) of four mistakes we run into when we do science. Unfortunately, we usually forget these warnings. Francis Bacon argued that we are — first — victims of evolution (SHA), i.e. that our genes (SHA), define constraints that necessarily limit insight (SHA). Second — we suffer from the constraints of imprinting (SHA); the culture (SHA) we live in provides a frame for epigenetic programs (SHA) that ultimately define the structure (SHA) of neuronal processing (SHA). Third — we are corrupted by language (SHA) as thoughts (SHA) cannot be easily transformed into verbal expressions . Fourth — we are guided or even controlled by theories (SHA), may they be explicit or implicit.

What are the implications for a cognitive toolkit? We are caught for instance in a language trap. On the basis of our evolutionary heritage we have the power of abstraction (SHA), but this has inspite of some advantages we brag about (to make us superior to other creatures) a disastrous consequence: Abstractions are usually represented in words; apparently we cannot do otherwise; we have to "ontologize"; we invent nouns to extract knowledge (SHA) from processes (SHA). ( I do not refer to the powerful pictorial shorthand abstractions). Abstraction is obviously complexity reduction (SHA). We make it simple. Why do we do this? Evolutionary heritage dictates to be fast. However, speed may give an advantage for a "survival toolkit", but not for a "cognitive toolkit". It is a categorical error (SHA) to confuse speed in action with speed in thinking. The selection pressure for speed invites to neglect the richness of facts. This pressure allows the invention (SHA) of a simple, clear, easy to understand, easy to refer to, easy to communicate shorthand abstraction. Thus, because we are a victim of our biological past and as a consequence a victim of ourselves we end up with shabby SHA's having left behind reality. If there is one disease all humans share, it is "monocausalitis", i.e. the motivation (SHA) to explain everything on the basis of just one cause. This may be a nice intellectual exercise but it is simply misleading.

Of course we depend on communication (SHA), and this requires verbal references usually tagged with language. But if we do not understand within the communicative frame or reference system (SHA) that we are a victim of ourselves by "ontologizing" and continuously creating "practical" SHA's, we simply use a cognitive toolkit of mental garbage. Is there a pragmatic way out other than to radically get rid of mental garbage? Yes, perhaps: Simply not using the the key SHA's explicitly in one's toolkit. Working on "consciousness", don't use (at least for one year) the SHA consciousness; if you work on the "self", never refer explicitly to self. Going through the own garbage one discovers many misleading SHA's, like just a few in my focus of attention (SHA): the brain as a net, localization of function, representation, inhibition, threshold, decision, the present, .... An easy way out is of course to refer to some of these SHA's as metaphors (SHA), but this again is evaiding the problem (SHA). I am aware of the fact (SHA) that I am also a victim of evolution, and to suggest "garbage" as a SHA also suffers from the same problem; even the concept of garbage required a discovery (SHA). But we cannot do otherwise than simply being aware of this challenge (SHA) that the content of the cognitive toolkit is characterized by self–referentiality (SHA), i.e. by the fact that the SHA's define themselves by their unreflected use.

Welcome to the Cyborg Campfire

Welcome to Cyborg Campfire

This will be the class blog for Philosophy 215D (Ethics and Technology). The course description is as follows.


Course Description and Objectives: The main goal of this class is to deepen our understanding of the impact of technology on various aspects of human life and experience. Using the works of philosophers, sociologists, and artists as our point of departure, we will critically examine a wide variety of approaches to coming to terms with the “age of technology” in which we live. Topics we will examine include the relationship between humans and machines, the cultural implications of technology, the arts and technology, and the possibility that we are entering a ‘post-human’ age.

Upon completion of this course students should be familiar with, and be able to critically discuss, at least the following themes and ideas:

The relationship between science and technology.
The classical approach to the philosophy of technology represented by Martin Heidegger, Jacques Ellul, and others.
More recent ‘empirical’ accounts of technology.
The worry that technology poses a threat of some kind to ‘human nature.’
The philosophical implications of recent developments in AI technologies.
The transformation of culture by the Internet.
The way that various technologies have impacted the arts.