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Philisoph
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has added a new journalpeace
anyone know of a good simple read on the history and method of socratic questioning socratic dialogue
thanks!
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has added a new journalThis is to inform you of my journal entry, ?Reconciling God, evil and free will?, and request your participation.
No it is not a religious tome, but rather a philosophical argument that addresses issues very relevant to our daily existence: evil, free will, and the existence of God.
I would greatly appreciate an open and informed rational, debate. I think you can find my journal entry through my profile. My username is plato.
I look forward to to the discussion.
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has added a new journalPeace...
has anyone come across any perspectives on islamophobia??
stories of facing it - any actions against it - any papers articles speeches on it - theoretical perspectives...
basically i am gathering peoples thoughts and perspectives on Islamophobia
mysticlvr
hmm... I'll think about it and see if I come up with anything, but right now I can't help ya, sorry! Nothing comes to mind.
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has added a new journalIf I where to take you, anesthisise you, and download your mind, completely, along with your memories, both those we traditionally consider such, like your memories of your past birthdays, of you mothers goodbye when you went to college, of your pets, your friends, your life, and the memories stored more remotely, in your body, how to light a lighter, how to bait a fishing hook, how to juggle, how to tie a tie correctly and how to make a sandwhich while speaking on the phone.
The memories stored in your body, in your muscles, in your joints. The memories you store in your senses that you never pay attention too and only access directly on few occasions.
The memory that wakes you from bed and has you grasping for your ringing phone with one hand, and reaching for your glasses with the other, without you thinking about either action. The memories that cause your mouth to water when you smell certain scents, and your nose to crinkle when you smell others, the memory that you, as a human, where born with. If I took your instincts, that made you human and that all humans share a fear of spiders, a fear of the night, a fear of sudden loud noises, of large onrushing animals, and I perfectly replicated your version of those instincts, that you overcame your fear of spiders, and now find them intriguing, or that you generalized it to include ants, octopuses, and slugs. If I took all the nuances, quirks, absurdities, beliefs, logical errors, and thought patterns that define your entirety to this point, anesthetized you, and downloaded all that information into a computer program that woke up knowing it was in a computer but wholely believing that it was a continuation of you. Would that program be you?
And why not?
If I where to awaken your body, full and functional, with mental process intact and whole, and proceeded to amputate your limbs, perform a block transplant of your internal organs, remove your kidneys, and replace their function with a dialysis machine, remove your heart and replace it with an entirely mechanical one, transfuse drain and transfuse all your blood and serum, block the cerebral foramen and place stents to take their function, transplant your corneas, remove and graft your skin with that of another, and wipe out your bone marrow and replace it with that of a donor. If I where to, in short, replace every replaceable organic part of you that can be replaced with inorganics, and replace every organic part of you with that of another person, and then I where to ask you, which if the two beings, the wholely programmed one, or the wholly altered one, who share all the same memories, all the quirks of one another, is you, which would it be?
And why?
If now, time took it?s course, and you became demented, and you lost your memories, lost your past, lost your abilities, your distinctive gait, your limp, the funny way you scratch your nose when you are confused, if you aged in a body that was largely not your own, and the computer lived it?s life in a body also entirely artificial. At what point could we claim the computer is a better example of whom you are, than you yourself?
Why would the computer not have a claim on your persona? Because it is a copy? What if after the transfer ws complete, we destroyed your physical body, and only left you in the computer, your mind, memories, instincts, behaviors and all, and, as we said before, the computer version fully believes itself to be you, a perfect continuation of whom you are.
Would it now have that claim?
Why not?
Why would the computer, who is mentally you in every sense, and only lacks your physical body not have a stronger clain on being the original than yourself, who is degrading mentally, and who largely lacks its own original body.
What makes you, you?
runner_forever
>> no matter how perfectly human-like the program, no matter what it believes of itself, that it is sentient, that it is alive, that it grows and lives and expereinces, that it is consiouse, to itself at the very least, it cannot claim any rights of sentience as long as it is not Human/Organic?My argument is not to imply that I necessarily regard every patient suffering an abnormal state of consciousness (e.g., stupor, amnesia, anencephaly, coma, persistent vegetative state, locked-in syndrome, and brain death) or any other bizarre disorder characteristic of an altered state of consciousness as dead, non-human, or less than human, and that I therefore refuse to grant the patient ?rights of sentience.? What I claim is that an attempt, independent of divine support, to create a fully functional and conscious artificial replica of a divinely created human would inevitably be an unfeasible impasse. And my claim is intended to be independent of whether the aforesaid patients are regarded as normal, abnormal, alive, dead, pseudo-dead, unconscious, selfless, asleep, awake, half-awake, dreaming, machine, soul, non-human, or less than human.
runner_forever
>> is this right of conciousness given to all humans and held by all humans from birth to death?>> even babies born without brains ? (ancephaly?) even those demented beyound reason? comatose beyond any outword appearance of life?
>> does the rooh remain intil the heart stops? or the brain? does it enter with the beating of a fetal heart? or the first electonic signals from a fetal mind? (again, ancephalic children will never have these signals)
>> so what parts would you need to be missing before an ohterwise human, human, also no longer has this rooh?
Answers are either unknown or are irrelevant to my previous argument. I will explain why my two-fold conclusion in the previous post is meant to stand true regardless of the unsolved mind-problem plaguing a conclusive solution to these questions.
By no means do I claim to have conclusive answers to these questions because fundamentally inherent in the questions is the unsolved mind-body problem. Complicating the crisis further is the conflict between dualist (mind and body are separate) and physicalist (mind has physical basis in matter) models of the mind. Indeed, I will not hesitate to elaborate your queries further with a few more examples of unsolved mysteries to which I have no sound answers acceptable to mainstream science. We don?t know when the mind (?rooh,? soul, consciousness, vital element, or whatever is deemed the ?mind?) comes into being during prenatal development, how it departs from the body, what actually happens in NDE (near-death experiences) and OBE (out-of-body) cases, what actually happens to the mind during pseudo-death, how mind affects matter, what kind of medium (if not physical medium) consciousness thrives in, to what extent infants experience various internal mental states in the case of dysfunctional or anencephalic brain, and so on. The cases of near-death experiences (NDEs) provoke similar ethical questions as do the cases of anencephaly. The apparent ethical issues in these cases reflect our gap in full understanding of the mind.
In ?Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness? published in Journal of Consciousness Studies in 1995, the renowned philosopher David Chalmers wrote that "onsciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind" and that "here is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain." We do not seem to fully understand such decisive subjects as the nature of the mind, precisely how mind and matter (material brain or body) interact, how to define death, whether it is fair to declare anencephalic or comatose patients dead or less than fully human, and so on. It may not be so easy to differentiate the mind from the body, and that is where part of the problem lies. Until the mind-body problem is solved, I feel safe to assume that the dispute on what really constitutes the mind and on the ensuing ethical dilemmas in clinical medicine will likely continue.
However, my previous argument is independent of these unknowns pertaining to the mind-body problem. All I argue is that since you or I cannot replicate the ?rooh,? on which other faculties of consciousness and free will may be contingent, you or I cannot create a genuine replica of another human. Therefore, I claim, that your questions, though intriguing in philosophical principle, assume the practically impossible. If something is impossible to achieve, then the ethical questions that arise from imaginary achievement of the impossible possess no practical or ethical relevance.
Creating a complete, genuine replica of a human is impossible for another reason. To have accomplished the feat is to have become a Creator like God with a big ?C? according to Quranic verses 21:21 and 46:4. Humans have been challenged to create, but they will never be able to create or become the Creator. But your hypothetical argument leads to the implication that by producing from certain building blocks of matter another human with full faculties of the mind (a much more audacious feat not be confused with mere ?cloning? of another human), one will have truly created a human and will have become the Creator. But there is only one Creator ? the one that created us.
In essence, you deem it possible to become the Creator, and then you pose the questions such as ?are you still within your rights to determine it has no claims to sentience?? The question has no practical relevance because what is actually impossible has been deemed, through imagination or unsupported assumptions, possible or achievable.
>> if something you make immitates life so perfectly that it believes in it's artificial heart of hearts that it too should be granted the rights of man, that it also wishes to kneel in prayer with you, to fast during ramadan, to contemplate the glory of God, do good and forbid evil.
There has to be a distinction between matter and mind unless you subscribe to the physicalist view. But support for physicalism is not without opposing support for dualism. You say: replicate heart, kidneys, and all the rest of matter, and even ?consciousness.? But is consciousness in matter or in some other non-physical realm? How would you replicate consciousness if it resides in a non-physical medium? Do you have full access to non-physical or spiritual realm so that you may replicate the consciousness of the material form of a human that resides in this plane of existence? These hard issues are not clarified; yet, it is conveniently claimed that consciousness may be replicated.
It is an unsupported assumption that once this material human-imitation is brought into being, the mind (?rooh,? soul, consciousness, vital element, or whatever is deemed the ?mind?), on which the being?s ?belief,? ?wish,? ?sentience,? sense of morality, free will, memory, judgment, and other things may be contingent, would automatically prop into existence and that the imitation would then enjoy the flowers, fear spiders and loud noises, believe in God, kneel in prayer and fast during Ramadan, and so on. I would not to be surpised if all that is produced is just flesh, bones, and blood, though fully functional. But such a colossal feat in creating a human, if successful, would effectively qualify you as a Creator and would falsify the idea that God is the only Creator, as He is deemed in the Quran. But God Himself has challenged humans to accomplish the feat and has guaranteed that they would fail. Therefore, you or I cannot create a human or a replica of a pre-existing or a dead human.
In sum, I claim the following in conclusion: (1) You or I cannot create a human or a replica of a pre-existing or a dead human (impossible feat), and (2) As a consequence of #1, the ethical questions that arise from imaginary achievement of the impossible feat pose no practical or ethical relevance. This two-fold conclusion is meant to stand true regardless of unknown or incomplete resolutions to the questions about anencephaly, coma, NDE, OBE, pseudo-death, and other unsolved mysteries of the mind-body problem. I might be arguing from a more practical standpoint about what is actually feasible based on current understanding, but what I have been presented is a hypothetical standpoint with some assumptions. Although the ethical concerns on the issues are definitely worthy of your concerned sympathy and consideration, which I have a high regard for, the concerns are nonetheless unrelated to my argument. If you intend to promote a pro-life argument (which I do value) for those suffering disorders such as anencephaly and coma, then erecting imaginary achievement of the impossible feat and then posing the ensuing ethical dilemmas does not seem to be the best approach.
I enjoyed reading your post from the perspective of the question "What makes you, you," which I do believe is a legitimate question worth further examination. The question points well to the crux of the concept of "self" in the mind-body problem. But what I claim is that the idea that a human is fully replicable in all its grandeur designed by the Creator is unsupported.
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has added a new journalThe printing press changed the modern world. Sparking the end of Catholic Dominance over a claim on Christianity with the widespread distribution and circulation of Luther?s thesis, but with it, first time different views and questions regarding faith became rampant and, in Europe, provoking the spread of ideas which in turn allowed intellectual though, and artistic expression to emerge in new directions. The ideas of Luther caught on, not because of their originality as many before him sought reformation of Catholicism, but because of accessibility.
What will bring such things to the Muslim world? Can the internet be Islam?s Printing press? Can increasing education and literacy throughout the Muslim world combined with the world wide access of ideas and new thought bring the dreams of reformation to the fore and allow laypersons into the religious debates before relegated only to clerics and scholars? Will it give disparate ideas a chance to coalesce into modern schools of Islamic religious thought? We should have no illusions of an all encompassing concept of Islam that all Muslims share, in any given mosque anywhere in the world you are guaranteed to find as many different conceptions of the ideals of Islam, it?s interpretations, practice and intricacies among thinking practitioners as you would in any given Church or synagogue regarding their respective religions.
While the key tenant and their understanding will remain largely uniform, peripheral concepts of religious ideas are as subject to individual understanding as any other ideology, religious or otherwise.
You would be hard pressed to find Sunni Muslims who agree with the wanton slaughter of Shia?s that seems to be a prevalent tenant of the more violent Sunni militants in Iraq. But religious debate in Islam has largely been a matter that has not permeated the Muslim street. The question is why?
How does one bring about a religious reform in a religion without a formalized church that defines its tenants? Without a head that can pass down change to the masses, without an institution that catalogues tenants, ideas and philosophies of the masses?
This is both a strength of Islam, and very likely the reason for the lack of internal revamping that was seen in the Christian world in the 15th and 16th centuries. There is no head of a worldwide Islamic Church; no Pope figure, no institution that codifies Islamic laws for its entire cadre of adherents that is able to ?change? them. No single institution that can be questioned or challenged.
For every fatwa that is proclaimed, it is nearly impossible to find group that will uniformly adopt or repel it. It becomes a matter of individuals. For every jihad that is called, it comes to each individual to accept it and practice it, or not. Islam has no figure that can excommunicate, nor one that will ever be able to state with any real accepted universal authority that a ruling is either correct and legal, or preposterous and absurd.
A fatwa against voting in western democracies or women driving in Saudi Arabia, gets a greater amount of Muslims shaking their heads in disbelief as not.
A more poignant example is that of Saudi Arabia, which is considered a Muslim state, while at the same time being a country ruled by a monarchy, a concept foreign to Islam as a religion but depressingly common in Islamic history and current nations that profess Islam as the dominant and ruling creed, as the alleged legal systems of said nations.
Within in Islam labels such progressive or conservative, fundamentalist or modern are arguably devoid of any significant defined meaning. Each believer believes what they believe, regardless of whether they pray five times daily, or not, fast during Ramadan or wear a beard or hijab, you can find progressive hijabi?s and self defined religious fundamentalists who mingle with the opposite sex drink alcohol.
Having over a billion adherents it is absurd to think of Islam as having a cult-like mentality where all share the same view on all aspects of religious theology and practice. At the same time it is imperative to bring a general understanding of the fluidity of Islamic thought to the fore. Those who capture the limelight, and the unfortunate effect this has on shaping the direction of dialogue is disastrous to the understanding of Islam to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Valid theological questions drown under threats of violence and retribution. The dialogue is taken hostage, and each individual who is not committed to weathering the storms of debate in order to see a new understanding of ideas emerge is left to define themselves alone, without the guidance of a defined religious authority.
Personaly I revel in such freedoms, I dislike it when others tell me what my beliefs are, or when people who are not me, tell me what I must believe, but the problem becomes how would I tell others that their beliefs are absurd and their understanding of a religion we share is either 1- stupid and fallacious, or 2- completely ignorant of the actual religion and more stepped in a cultural heritage that is now functionally defunct, or 3- some scholar?s poorly thought out misunderstanding of reality.
Who can I challenge? Where is the Mosque onto which I can nail Mosque?s door can I nail my thesis of Islam and tolerance?
How can I spark and unintended revolution against a church that does not exist in the same way?
Maybe I?ll send an email to the Saudi embassy?.
