Sophie's World - 7

"A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight. Socrates was one of these rare people. He knew that he knew nothing about life and the world. And now comes the important part: it troubled him that he knew so little." (Sophie’s World)

This quote seems to have real meaning for me.  This quote, as I understood it, says that all of the people who have great knowledge and use that knowledge to answer what they do not know are not philosophers.  Philosophers are instead, people who know they know nothing of the real world no matter how much they learn; these people do not answer philosophical questions they interpret and digest them, discovering their true meaning in order to learn what the question poses to offer.  The quote seems to be almost scientific in nature, in science you need to prove something with your knowledge, but every advancement made sets you back with all the questions it opens up, such as if we discover how to travel at the speed of light we would then have to answer the question where do we go and many unknown more.  The idea that every advancement only proves how little you know is very scientific in nature, and this idea seems to manifest itself in math and science but not any other foundation of learning.

Connection - 7

District 9 was, in my opinion, both terrible and stupendous.  I recently watched District 9 for the first time in my science fiction class; it was a dull enjoyment to be honest.  The amazing quality of film technique and the great roles portrayed really brought the movie to life for me.  Unfortunately this was a blessing and a curse, the movie was so captivating that the gruesome portrayal of the main character’s transformation seemed even more disgusting.  I was thoroughly disappointed at the pieces the director decided to show as “realistic”.

The film had an interesting message though, it portrayed human abuse of the “prawns” or aliens.  The Prawns were originally cared for but eventually shunned as humans did not want to have to change their life-styles to accommodate the vastly different aliens.  The fact that the movie takes place in South Africa must also have poetic meaning; South Africa, the “home to apartheid” just relived its past with the prawns until one man decided enough was enough, to get out from behind his desk and fight back against the human oppression for the prawns.  Given he was turning into a prawn and he was no longer accepted into human society, but he still did fight for the prawns.  I guess if you took a philosophical approach, such as with Kant’s opinion, he was doing things immorally because of his intent to save himself, but anyway the movie was good in its less gruesome scenes.

Sophie's World - 6

In “Sophie’s World” Sophie ends with a garden party, the party goes strangely awry and it seems that it all strange.  The first ridiculous thing that happens is that Alberto, the philosopher, throws firecrackers into the yard, following this he puts a sparkler into the almond cake, not very normal behavior.  This could all be explained as just strange until Joanna tries to eat Jeremy and the attack each other with terrifyingly unexpected passion.  When Alberto reveals to the party guests that they are all fictional characters (or at least characters in Albert’s book) the logical rational thinking in the party just goes farther away the guests aren’t happy and Sophie’s Mother does not want her to leave at first, right after this Joanna begins to smear cake onto Jeremy’s face and lick it off.  Finishing with a religious meaning Sophie mentions how her Garden of Eden is now destroyed, and Alberto answers that she has been driven out.  Sophie and Alberto than disappear from Sophie’s den just before they are nearly run over by a Mercedes.  The strangeness of the chapter doesn’t seem to fit with the strangeness from other parts of the book, and points to the fact that we may know nothing of our own world.

Sophie's World - 5

Marx’s idea that philosophy should be practical is, in my personal opinion, one of his better and more reasonable theories.  The idea that philosophy should be more practical must have been around before Marx, it seems like such a simple request to be made.  The traditional questions of philosophy, such as why are we here, where did we come from, as well as other things like is religion correct and how should we view the world to live the best lives all seem to be missing the point.  What matters here and now is that a new more perfect system must be evolved through human thought, philosophy, to control and balance out the human imperfection.  Ideally to leave us in not a state of bliss but a state of harmony, a balance between failure and success that leaves us aspiring and moral.  Preferably without the need to destroy those who don’t agree.  This type of system could probably never work, due to the fact that it would rely on trusting in the idea that no one will take advantage of the system, unfortunately this is the same problem Marx’s communism had and now we are left with the communism we know today and find oppressive.

Connections - 6

Recently I was introduced to the Symphony of Science; one of the more interesting videos is entitled “A Wave of Reason”(linked below).  This video takes several different lectures and videos from many different scientists and cuts then together; the creator then auto-tuned the entire video to make it into a song.  The song is essentially summing up modern day reason, the fact that science is not something very different from religion.  In the song Carl Sagan mentions that science is more than a structure of ideas like religion, it is a form of thinking, of skeptically inquiring.  Lawrence Krauss is added in stating that science is a way to interpret the real, magnificent, world, and the only true way.  Phil Plait, around 1:28, states that if you can teach a man to reason he will think for a life time.  An interesting philosophy, reason and logic, basically the scientific mindset, are the root to philosophy, which makes a lot of sense.  Aristotle interpreted the world through science and perception, while some philosophers believe this is pointless it is the only thing that we have to rely on besides ourselves, and I don’t think anyone could be amazing to the point of no longer needing outside influence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PT90dAA49Q&feature=related

Connection - 5

You can’t really answer the question often hinted to in Inception, when you take off all of the extra science fiction baggage you are really just left with “is your world real?”  Now many people would think that it was a stupid question and that of course their world is real, after all what else could there be?  But if you think philosophically about the question you get into “fried noodle territory”.   There is no way to justify that your world isn’t real, so we have to assume it is or be thrown into chaos ourselves.  What would be the purpose of anything if we were in a “dream world”?  And anyway, according to Inception we could probably just kill ourselves to wake up¹.

If we were living outside of reality other people wouldn’t be in our dream, except for a few, everyone else would just be a projection of our imagination.  Would this mean that by destroying building or killing people we would be destroying our own sub-consciousness?  According to the movie we wouldn’t be but I still feel that destruction of parts of a dream would cause the dreamer to forget about those projections it made and possibly the memories under those projections.

Maybe the reason something seems familiar or that time seems to slow down or speed up and other strange phenomena could be caused by the fact that we are all hooked up to a machine in some hospital or military facility.  And these oddities are us seeing that we are in a maze before we get distracted or disoriented, similar to trying to remember a dream, even if it just happened.

¹ – not a good idea to try out

genetic engineering

What if your only child died or was dying from an accident and cloning was the only way to save them?

Making a child for the sole purpose of using them to cure someone definitely seems unethical.  The fact that you would need to clone someone in order to save them is also fairly absurd.  There have been recent developments where it was possibly to transplant a trachea into a person that was grown from their own stem cells.  But growing a person is definitely unethical, the person would have a mind and consciousness, and you would use this human being to save someone without asking whether they wanted to try to save them.  If a child is born through cloning, whether in a test tube or naturally born, what connection would the parents have to that child, the child would always be second when it came down to it.  The child was born to save the first therefore the first was more important, and how can you love a child that you had through desperation?  It seems like a sick idea when not situational.  The child might even be put up for adoption after being used, disposed of.  Also, the fact that it takes a child around 12 years to even get their heads to the same sizes as they will be when they are adults poses the question of what disease could really put aside that long to wait for a child to develop to normal size?  And after 10 years or more with a child, raising it as one’s own, who could then use their flesh in blood like that, even if it was to save their only other child.  Now I definitely believe that no child should die before their parents, but to save someone a full cloning is almost an absurdity in the first place.  The only things that a person would need a full body clone for would be if their entire body began to shut down, and if that happened we don’t have the technology to perform a trans-body surgery so it would be pointless.  Now, I have no clue what I would decide on in the moment; but, I do believe that creating a child for the sole purpose of exploiting them is ridiculous.

Would you be willing to be part of a genetic experiment that not only strengthened your muscles but prevented them from deteriorating with age?

This experiment would first off seem very sketchy, and no I would not participate in this experiment.  Due to the fact that it is an experiment I wouldn’t want to get anywhere near what they are sticking in those patients and volunteers.  Genetic engineering is an emerging field and with very little knowledge about how exactly the body does some things and what the body’s reasons are for not developing a certain way.  If this treatment became publicly available after significant testing and extreme scrutiny, I might just take a risk and go for it.  I feel that this kind of research should go to curing disease, not to becoming the next best steroid.  And if it becomes available or even possible I will bet that somewhere someone will be abusing it for personal gain, not personal repair.   If the world got to a point where our old folks no longer died of body break down related old age where would we keep everyone? Old folks homes would go out of business and people would live until their body spontaneously failed or slowly went insane until their body finally did spontaneously fail.  Living a life where your mind disintegrates before your body seems like one not worth living, but then again living with only your mind can be torture.  The only cure is pure immortality, but then how much humanity can one person see before life is no longer fulfilling? Immortality doesn’t seem like it would be to amazing if your mind could never escape from inevitable life.  This just seems painful and unnecessary, I would much rather take a sane death than an immortal one.

Is this kind of genetic selection ethical?

I have recently watched the movie Gattaca, it is an interesting movie and even though it wouldn't make my top choices (or even get recommended to a friend) it had a good message.  Gattaca portrays a world where genetic engineering is not only common, it is the norm, in fact the world has slipped so far into the treacherous and unknown waters of this field that when a person is born without genetic engineering they are considered "in-valid".  This and the combination of ethics make for an interesting topic.
     Genetic engineering, scientists are making progress in this field of research and its very controversial.  On one hand you have the fact that it can’t not only make lives better but can save lives before they ever need saving; on the other hand, the afflictions that may soon be cured have been the inspiration for many athletes, scientists, and politicians to accomplish great things.  Genetic engineering could be a great accomplishment for our society, possibly curing many diseases and much more.  But controlling how a baby matures and develops in life not only seem like cheating in a way but also remove the incentive for that person to try their hardest to succeed because everything would be easier for them to start off with.  Controlling fate, while I know this may make me seem old fashioned or "stuck in my ways", seems like it can too easily be transformed into controlling evolution and undermining natural things.  Because of the distinct things that could very well go too right with this science I feel that the research is not only unethical but unsafe.  Now there are those diseases that should be prevented or cured and genetic engineering is the only this that can get us to that point and striving for that does not seem unethical at all.  But, there has lately been an increase in the number of developed and developing genetically engineered pointless projects.  By this I mean things like making it so people cannot get fat, a perfume that is naturally secreted by the body, and other weird stuff like that.  This was one of the reasons Michael Crichton wrote his astounding book Jurassic Park, and also why genetic engineering is teetering into unknown and unethical territory.