Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt: A Platonic Dialogue by MC Complete

Daniel: I don’t understand this free will business.  It’s meaningless.  Who needs it?

Isaac: But if we didn’t have free will, what would be with moral responsibility?

Daniel: I don’t understand this moral responsibility business.  It’s meaningless.  Who needs it?

Isaac: But without moral responsibility, how could we punish criminals?

Daniel: Aha.  Punishing criminals is about deterrence.  Not revenge.

Isaac: But if punishing criminals is only about deterrence, then why do we take pains (in theory) to avoid punishing the innocent?

Daniel: What?  Why not?

Isaac: Taking pains to avoid punishing the innocent dilutes the deterrence effect (in theory).  If moral responsibility is not an issue, then why would we care so much if the alleged criminal actually committed the crime?

Daniel: Hmmm, I hadn’t thought of that.  Very clever.  In that case, what is moral responsibility?

Isaac: Heck if I know.  But it must be something!

Work smarter, not harder: A Hasidic Parable by MC Complete

A long time ago, in a village far, far away, there were two brothers, Reuven and Shimon.  Reuven and Shimon were very different in many ways.  Reuven was always tired and sleep deprived; Shimon always got plenty of rest.  Reuven was always busy, worried and stressed out; Shimon always took it easy.  But there was one thing the brothers had in common: they both learned a lot of Torah.

After 120 years, the brothers went to shamayim.  When they got to Gan Eden, Reuven was rewarded with a beautiful plot of land with flowers, fruit trees, a Shas, a Rambam, a Shulchan Aruch, and the Ran on Nedarim.  However, Shimon was rewarded with a huge plot of land, with trees, flowers, birds, a waterfall, and a library full of Rishonim, Achronim, and Poskim, and wireless.

When Shimon saw this, he was very upset.  He want to Hashem and said, “Hashem, I don’t understand.  My borther worked so hard all his life.  He was sleep deprived, stressed out, and worried, and yet he always found time to learn Torah.  And how he learned Torah!  He would not turn the page until he understood every word of the Gemara.  I know that sometimes he would struggle with passages in the Gemara, so much so that sometimes he would not be able to sleep.”

“Hashem, You know that I did not learn Torah like that.  I never had the kochos hanefesh that my brother had.  If I didn’t understand something, I would read some mefarshim, think about it for a few minutes, maybe discuss it with my brother, and then, if I wasn’t getting anywhere, I would move on and forget about it.”

“There must be some mistake!  I got the portion of Gan Eden that was clearly intended for my brother.”

“Do not worry about your brother, “ said Hashem.  “He got the a beautiful portion in Gan Eden.  But you got the portion that was intended for you.”

“When I learn Torah,” Hashem said, “do you think I’m tired, stressed out, and worried?  Of course not.  For Me, learning Torah is easy.  Your brother learned Torah the way a man learns Torah, but you learned the way that I learn.  You fulfilled the words of My Torah: in the image of God was Man created.”

“Effort and willpower is an aspect of the body, but wisdom is an aspect of the soul.”

This life is a constant struggle between the Yetzer Tov and the Yetzer Hara.  The Yetzer Tov is like a tiny nation state surrounded on all sides by large enemy nations.  The Yetzer Tov has no hope of overpowering the Yetzer Hara.  The only hope of the Yetzer Tov is to have better weapons and better battle plans.

And lots and lots of siyata dishmaya.

The king and the general: A Hasidic Parable by MC Complete

A long time ago, in a kingdom far, far away, lived a king and a general.  One day, an enemy kingdom invaded with a large army.  The king asked his general to lead the king’s army and repel the invasion.  With great ingenuity and bravery, the general repelled the invasion.

The king was very happy.  The next day, a messenger arrived at the general’s house with a beautiful white horse.

“The king has decided to honor you for your bravery,” said the messenger.  “He sent you this horse as a token of appreciation.”

“I’m sorry,” said the general.  “But I cannot accept this horse.  Please return it to the king.”

The messenger was shocked.  “Why not?” he asked.

“Because I am confident that if I wait for a few years, the king will send me a horse *and* a chariot,” replied the general.

What could he do?  The messenger returned to the king and reported to him the bizarre words of the general.

The king was furious.  “How dare the general refuse my gift?” he asked.

A few years passed.  Again, the foreign army invaded.  Again, the general repelled the invasion.  But this time, the king did not send a gift to the general.  “If my gifts are not good enough for the general, why should I bother sending them?” the king asked.

The king, of course, is Hashem.  The general is us.  Sometimes Hashem sends us physical pleasures as a reward for our mitzvos.  Sometimes we accept them with love; but sometimes we refuse them, thinking that eschewing the pleasures of this world will make us frummer.  Sometimes we even think that enjoying the pleasures of this world will dilute our reward in The Next World, as if zechuyos are stock options that may be exercised at a time of our choosing.

Is the mind a computer?

Is the mind a machine?  Daniel Dennet seems to think so.

The brain is an organ.  Organs are organic machines, components in a composite machine (the composite machine is the animal itself).  Probably, one can also analyze the brain, and see how the brain is also a composite machine, composed of smaller machines.  Maybe the mind is simply one of the smaller machines that compose the brain.

Is the mind a computer?  Dennet calls the mind a “virtual machine”.  The term “virtual machine” can mean different things in technical contexts.  The JVM (Java Virtual Machine) and a VMWare (VM here stands for “virtual machine”) image are two very different things.  Mostly what Dennet is trying to say by using this term is that the mind is software as opposed to hardware.  This distinction is very important to Dennet, and he uses it to make some interesting points, but I find it problematic and sometimes distracting.  So for the moment I want to ignore the hardware/software distinction.

Computers, unlike many other machines, deal with data.  A computer stores data in memory (and on disk, and in registers, but let’s ignore these distinctions for the moment).   The contents of memory change over time.  This gives rise to a distinction that I do not want to ignore: the distinction between data and behavior.  A computer does things, but computer memory doesn’t do anything.  The computer’s CPU does things.  The memory is there for the CPU to play with.

The CPU can do things, but without the memory, it doesn’t know what to do!  It looks to the memory for instructions on what to do next.  This adds complexity, so some computers or computer programs segment the memory into the part that contains instructions and the part that contains non-instructions, or data.

If we model the mind as a computer, consciousness should be modeled as the data memory of the computer.  A mind can be conscious of different kinds of things.  The simplest contents of consciousness may be sensory perception, but certainly includes other things, like emotions, thoughts, etc.

I sometimes like to use JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) as a semi-formal, or pseudocode, way of visualizing the contents of data memory.  Here is a pseudocode model of a conscious state:

{
 visualField: ‘Some bitmap with a computer screen’,
 desires: [
‘Solve the mind-body problem’,
‘Publish a philosophical paper’,
 ],
 volition: ‘typing’,
 beliefs: [
‘The mind is a computer’,
‘God exists’
 ]
}

At any other point in time, the memory of this mind probably has contents that are different to some extent or another, for instance:

{
 visualField: ‘Israeli salad’,
 desires: [
‘Solve the mind-body problem’,
‘Publish a philosophical paper’,
 ],
 volition: ‘eating’,
 beliefs: [
‘The mind is a computer’,
‘God exists’
 ]
}

This “JSON object” represents the contents of consciousness, which is the data memory of the mind.  Presumably, there is something relevant to the CPU and the instruction memory, which controls or influences the transitions between conscious states, but those mechanisms are not contents of consciousness.

Many have emphasized the “higher-order” nature of consciouness, which means that the mind can think about itself.  Some, like Hofstaedter (and my father), seem to suggest that it is this “higher-order” nature that makes consciousness what it is.  Dennet is a bit more cautious about this point, but he too finds great importance in this higher-order-ness.  Higher-order-ness can also be modeled in JSON, and I think modeling it in this way can help clarify what higher-order-ness means:

{
 visualField: ‘Bitmap with a computer screen’,
 thoughts: [
‘I see a computer in front of me’,
‘There is a computer in front of me’,
‘I think therefore I am’
 ]
}

When the mind thinks about itself, it has a very high degree of accuracy.  There is nothing logically necessary about this.  It’s just how the mind works.

I Think: A Platonic Dialogue by MC Complete

Daniel: Why do you think we think?

Clement: What do you mean by think?

Daniel: I mean, talk to ourselves in natural language.

Clement: Talk to ourselves internally?

Daniel: Right, not out loud.

Clement: What do you mean by why?

Daniel: Well, in a few places, you seem to imply that the Joyce Machine is a search engine.  Bird calls and Plato's Aviary and all that.

Clement: Surely, thinking accomplishes many different things and works in different ways.  But I am suggesting that one of the main functions of thought (in this sense), perhaps the original function of thought, is the search function.  Soul-searching, you could say.

Daniel: I've been thinking that the Joyce Machine (in this sense) is more of a YouTube than a search engine.

Clement: What do you mean?

Daniel: It's about content creation, not search.  There is no Central Birdkeeper who has to call the birds; the birds ultimately express themselves in our behavior one way or another.  They don't need an intermediary.  They're kind of like demons.  Thinking isn't a method of calling birds; it's a method of creating new birds.

Heterophenomenologists Have Feelings Too

Tribesman: You ask many questions about Feenoman.

Anthropologist: Yes, I want to learn as much as I can about him.

Tribesman: So why should I answer your questions? Why don’t I just take you to meet him?

Anthropologist: You can take me to meet Feenoman?

Tribesman: Follow me.

Feenoman: Hello. You look like an anthropologist.

Anthropologist: And you’re Feenoman?

Feenoman: That’s me.

Anthropologist: Well, if you’ll excuse my impertinence, your tribesman here told me that Feenoman can split the sea. Can you split the sea?

Feenoman: Of course. Want to see?

Anthropologist: Actually, I do.

Feenoman: There. Split. How do you like them apples?

Anthropologist:

Emotional Energy: A Platonic Dialogue by MC Complete

Daniel: You know what I think, Clement?  I think interaction dualism is a scientific hypothesis.

Clement: A scientific hypothesis? You mean, like Intelligent Design?

Daniel: No, I mean like general relativity. When Einstein first dreamed up the theory of relativity, it was not very testable. In the past century, we’ve developed better and better tools to allow us to test the theory. Some aspects, like gravitational waves, are still untested.

Clement: What are you saying? What “tools” do we need to “test” the Theory of Dualism, tools that we don’t currently have?

Daniel: There’s a huge neuroscientific gap. If and when we know more about how the brain really works, we will have a much better idea of whether dualism or materialism is correct.

Clement: I see. Your dualistic mind is a Mind Of The Gaps. That’s exactly what I hate about dualism. The gap in scientific knowledge gives your dualistic mind a place to hide. The smaller the gap gets, the less room it will have. Your dualistic attitude helps to stifle scientific inquiry.

Daniel: Stifle scientific inquiry? I embrace scientific inquiry! I have nothing to be afraid of. I’m not committed to either dualism or materialism. I just want to know what scientific inquiry will reveal, if successful. It’s those who are committed to one side of the debate, like you, who should be afraid.

Clement: Um, sorry if I’m not quaking in my boots, but I’m not really expecting further inquiries into neuroscience to reveal the intervention of an immaterial soul.

Daniel: What makes you so sure?

Clement: Well, the conservation of energy, for one thing.

Daniel: I don’t understand why you seem to think that the Argument from Energy is so watertight. Haven’t you ever heard of emotional energy?

Clement: Emotional energy?

Daniel: Maybe the mind itself is a repository of energy -- maybe some mind/brain interactions transfer energy to the mind from the brain, and some interactions transfer energy from the brain to the mind.

Clement: If the mind can have energy, can it also have mass? Can it have a physical position? If so, in what sense is it not physical?

Daniel: It could have some of those things, or none of those things. It is not physical in the sense that experience is essentially not physical, in other words, experience is an extra property not accounted for yet by physics. Or maybe it’s dark energy.

Clement: Dark energy? Are you serious?

Daniel: No. I mean, no and yes. Dark energy shows that there are some gaps in our understanding of energy as well. Sean Carrol (a strong materialist, by the way) has recently suggested that energy is not always conserved. Or maybe it *is* dark energy. That’s my point, we just don’t know. The conservation of energy is not, in and of itself, a reason to stifle scientific inquiry into the nature of the spirit.

Clement: OK, let’s leave energy aside for a moment. If immaterial souls can causally influence the internals of brain, why can’t my soul control your brain (and thus, your body)?

Daniel: There could be many reasons why. At this point, we don’t have enough empirical data to suggest an answer to such specific questions.

Clement: Can you think of a reason why? Even without evidence, can you imagine a dualist physics that might count as a coherent answer to that question?

Daniel: Good question.  Give me a minute to come up with something, willya?

Clement: No problem. I have all the time in the world.  I'm a fictional character, and the reader won't notice the time passing anyway.

Daniel: Hey Clement, you know what?

Clement: No, what?

Daniel: Nothing's coming to mind.  I think I'll have to get back to you on this one.

Clement: Good luck, Daniel.  Note that I'm not holding my breath.

Materialist Heaven

Some people (Sean Carrol, for example) assume that materialism implies that we’re not going to heaven. Fortunately, Dennet does not make this mistake. However, I found his treatment of materialist heaven a little bit disappointing. In a book of what, 400 pages? he devotes about a half a page to it, and I found his treatment very vague. Maybe he actually wanted certain people not to notice what he was up to.

To me it’s very simple: if materialism is true, then when we die, our minds get uploaded to heaven.

Now I suppose that’s not materialism in the strictest sense. It posits a heaven that is explicitly not made of matter, or at least the kind of matter we know and love. What I mean by materialism is mind-materialism. Not that *everything* is matter, but that the mind is matter. To posit mind-dualism, we need to actually update physics to include a new category of consciousness, which actually has causal interactions with good old matter. But positing a spiritual heaven does not have this problem, since there’s no reason for heaven to interact with the material world. The heaven arrow goes one way.

Now, the secularists of course would say that we have no evidence for the existence of heaven. I think that is not really an objection to what I’m saying here. We have a tradition that heaven is real, and that’s good enough for the purposes of this discussion.

How to Have Your Idealist Cake, and Eat Materialism To!

I think one of the reasons that it was so hard for me to swallow materialism for such a long time is that I couldn’t figure out how to buy materialism without selling my idealism. Subjective, internal space is what I know; objective, external space is theorized and imagined, almost like a fantasy. So I was afraid that buying materialism would be tantamount to trading in reality for a fantasy. If the objective, external, realistic world that I theorize is to be a materialist world, that means that this imagined material world must include, as part of it, appearances and imagination. It must be possible to account for appearances and imagination, Berkeley’s “ideas”, in physical terms. Otherwise, I refused to buy materialism. I would stick with dualism, and if that as well proved incoherent, I could retreat into my idealism and abandon realism altogether.

I believe in Berkeley’s ideas. Could Berkeley’s ideas be matter?

Well, all of the information about the “ideas” can be encoded in matter. Matter is very good at encoding information. It can encode whatever information you want.

So all the information about how the world appears to me can be encoded in matter. “I see a computer screen” could be equivalent to there being a data structure in my brain with an instance variable, {‘visualField’: ‘bitmap with computer screen’}.  All you have to do is give up on the meaning of the term “to see”. The relationship of me to my visual field is just a quale: it has no informational content.  To make materialism work, you simply have to assume that it has no essence either.  This is an easier job than trying to insist that it *has* an essence!  Assume that imagination is just an instance variable, and suddenly it’s very easy to understand how all mental theorizing can be interpreted as information, digitally encoded in the brain of the theorist.

Reading Consciousness Explained Part 4: The Animal Spirit

According to Daniel Dennet, consciousness is "software". This would imply that animals, like cats and dogs, are not conscious, that month-old babies are not conscious (up to the point I've read in the book, Dennet has not speculated as to what age the installation completes), and that in some cultures, fully functional adult humans might not be conscious.

In my arrogant opinion, pain (and pleasure) are conscious states, states of mind.  Therefore, only a conscious being can feel pain.  Therefore, to claim that cats are not conscious implies that cats cannot feel pain.  This is possible, of course, but it sounds wrong.

The Jewish tradition would seem to assume that animals can feel pain, as evidenced by the commandment not to cause (needless) pain to animals.  But to what animals?  Is one allowed, in theory, to hunt non-kosher fish for sport?  Is one allowed to step on a roach on the sidewalk to vent one’s frustration about the roaches in one’s house?

Destroying plant life is (sometimes) forbidden because of a different commandment, “bal tashchit”, not being wasteful, but uprooting weeds in a public area is certainly not seen as causing pain to anything.

And while we're on the subject, does the halachic distinction between plants and animals agree with the biological distinction? Are sponges kosher?

The Importance of not Being Earnest

One of the things about being a dilettante is that you tend to reinvent things that were actually invented years or decades earlier.  For example, I invented the deflationary theory of truth, the Mary’s Room argument from knowledge, object persistence, transactional memory, and even the for-each loop, which were all well-known to the experts, but unknown to myself in my own personal ignorance, at the time I invented them.

One of the things that I ignorantly reinvented is Nerdcore Hip-Hop, also known as Geeksta Rap.  I’ve been rapping about computer science and software engineering since 2004.  In 2007, someone finally pointed out to me that Nerdcore was a well-established musical/literary genre.  Immediately, as the Midrash would say, I went to Wikipedia to get a list of the prominenent Nerdcore MC’s.  List in hand, I went over the list MC by MC and listened to whatever music they had on line.

One of the MC’s on the list was MC Lars.  On his website at the time, Lars had the songs “Download this Song”, “iGeneration”, and “Hot Topic is not Punk Rock.”  My reaction: good music and good delivery, but the lyrics were too earnest.  There’s something unsubversive about an MC who can say “It’s the new artist model” with a straight face.  So it made an impression...but I didn’t go back for more.

One of the MC’s from the list who I did buy was Shael Riley.  I wouldn’t really call him an MC.  He might have done some rapping, but he mostly plays music and sings.  A few months ago, I wrote a rap inspired by Shael’s song “Music Ruined Video Games” (which, by the way, is breathtaking).  I thought I might actually get the chance to record it, so I went to Shael’s website to download the song.  On Shael’s website, I saw that he had a Twitter account, so I followed him.

I don’t remember if it was Twitter who suggested Lars based on the fact that I was following Shael, or if Shael actually retweeted Lars, but when I saw Lars was on Twitter, I followed him too.  I thought, “He’s not a geek.  He looks like a quarterback.”

From Lars’ posts, it soon became clear that he runs a record label.  That piqued my curiosity.  I’m always on the lookout for labels that might want to sign me.  I checked the label's website: Lars and one other band, nothing in the mission statement about “this label exists for the purpose of publishing the albums of MC Lars.”  I figured I should do a bit more homework before pestering, so I went to Lars’ website and clicked on “Music Videos”.  I listened to “Ahab” and “Signing Emo” (I don’t remember why I didn’t listen to the other songs there).  They were pretty cool, so I sent my unsolicited demo to Horris Records.

About a week later, I received one of the nicest rejection emails I’ve ever received.  Lars basically said that he liked my songs but he wasn’t signing new acts right now.  (The fact that he wasn’t signing new acts didn’t surprise me, but the nice email did.)  In his email, Lars said I should listen to his new mixtape, “Indie Rocket Science”.  I figured it was the least I could do, so I listened.
I was blown away.  Somehow, nothing in “Ahab” and “Signing Emo” had prepared me for the brilliance of “Indie Rocket Science”.  I wondered: when did the earnest Lars of 2007 become so ironic?  Lars has his entire discography up for free online listening, so I listened to the whole thing in reverse chronological order.

I think that the leap from “great” to “brilliant” occurred between the “Digital Gangster LP” of 2008 and the “Gigantic Robot” album of 2009.  I think that “The Graduate” (2006), which contains the songs I’d heard in ‘07, is a great album too, I’d just listened to the wrong songs from it.  If I’d listened to “Space Game”, “Crunk Rap”, and, yes, “Signing Emo”, I would have bought back then.

Interestingly, I think there was also a leap from “good” to “great” between “Insectivorous” (2000, Lars’ first album) and the “Laptop EP” (2004).  The delivery on “Insectivorous” is kind of unprofessional IMAO.  I find this very encouranging.  If MC Lars can learn to rap, maybe I can too!

In my arrogant opinion, Lars is the second-best rapper in history.  I still think Eminem is #1.

Reading Consciousness Explained Part 3: Sliding Windows

Memory and sensory experience are different in kind, not just in degree.

Many arguments in Consciousness Explained seem to be implicitly founded on blurring the distinction between the two -- mistakenly, in my arrogant opinion.

It follows from this distinction that we never remember vivid sensory experience.  Instead, we remember sensory experience and assume that it was as vivid as the sensory experience of the present.  If a demon were to claim that my past sensory experiences were less vivid than my present experience, I wouldn't be able to invoke my memories to counter the claim.

What about motion?  Motion happens over time.  Is motion experienced, or just remembered?  The claim that motion is only remembered and not experienced sounds very wrong.  But experience is of the present, and the present is static.  I mean, it should be static.  What would it be like to remember motion but never experience it?

There are three ways to process a stream.  You can process it element by element, you can process it in chunks, or you can process it with a sliding window.  Is it possible that the stream of consciousness is really a sliding window?  This would imply that we subjectively live with two kinds of time...

Reading Consciousness Explained Part 2: Short Circuit

How does memory work? What does memory record? Does memory record conscious experience, or does it record the sensory input that causes conscious experience?

It could be (A) that memory records conscious experience. Let's say I see a computer screen. So light waves enter my eyes, my eyes send messages to my brain via my neurons, and then I experience a vision of a computer screen, and then the information from my conscious mind is written back to my brain and recorded in my memory.

Or, it could be that (B) the "store" to memory, "short-circuits" the conscious mind, or in other words, memory is a record of the sensory (or emotional etc.) input, but not a direct record of my conscious experiences. When the visual message gets to my brain, my brain records the message in my memory and additionally also sends it to my conscious mind.

B sounds very reasonable (which is not to say that A is unreasonable). However, it has philosophical and spiritual consequences that are a little bit surprising. It implies that in a sense, all memory is fictional. It does not recall an experience from a record of that experience, but rather creates a conscious experience of memory from circumstantial evidence.

Reading Consciousness Explained Part 1: The Cartesian Theater

I've been immensely enjoying "Consciousness Explained", but now it's getting frustrating. Dennet is attacking what he calls "the Cartesian Theater" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_theater) or "Catesian materialism". He says: "Many theorists would insist that they have rejected such an obviously bad idea. But as we shall see, the persuasive imagery of the Cartesian Theater keeps coming back to haunt us...even after its ghostly dualism has been denounced and exorcised."

But the Cartesian Theater is simply the proposition that the brain has a processor. Why is that an "obviously bad idea"? It's possible that the brain doesn't have a processor, but questions like that should be decided empirically.

Dennet says, "The brain is Headquarters, the place where the ultimate observer is, but there is no reason to believe that the brain itself has any deeper headquarters...in short, there is no observer inside the brain." Well, the fact that computers have a "deep headquarters" is a reason to suspect, if not to believe, that brains have one too. It has nothing to do with dualism.

Don't get me wrong, I love Daniel Dennet. I just wish he'd consulted with me before publishing this.

Command Line Dreaming

dglibicki@naturalbridges:/home/dglibicki$ movehomedira
Please enter your username:
dglibicki
Please enter your password:
********
Hello, Daniel!
Please enter your current address:
*********************
Please enter your new address:
******************************
Do you want to forward your mail from your old address to your new address (Y/n)?
Y
Do you want to accept the arnona for your new address (Y/n)?
Y
Do you want to accept the water bill for your new address (Y/n)?
Y
Do you want to accept the gas bill for your new address (Y/n)?
Y
Do you want to accept the electric bill for your new address (Y/n)?
Y
Thanks, Daniel, you are done.  Bracha vehatzlacha in your new home!
dglibicki@naturalbridges:/home/dglibicki$

that ain't gonna work on saturday

I’m MC Gedalya Goomber
I’m shady, white and slim
On shabbos day I serve Hashem
By resting just like Him
On weekdays I'm freestyling
It’s like I’ll never quit
But both my eyelids start to droop
When the Shabbos lights are lit

chorus:
Ain’t gonna work on Saturday
Ain’t gonna work on Saturday
Double, double, triple pay
Won’t make me work on Saturday
Ain’t gonna work on Saturday
It’s shabbos kodesh

One time I was a rabbi
And on the seventh day
My congregants expected me
To get up there and pray
But I was busy resting
I’d fallen fast asleep
So everyone got up and went
To the shul accross the street

(chorus)

One time I was a doctor
A famous specialist
US News and World Report
Even put me on their list
On shabbos someone called me
I didn’t get the phone
I told him he should take two pills
And call me Yom Rishon

(chorus)

I once was an explorer
To Africa I went
One day three sleepy lions
Came snoring around my tent
My assistant held my rifle
“Yo Goomber, shoot those pests!”
But I invited them inside
To get some shabbos rest

(chorus)

ashrei

Yo, who’s in the house? In the house of the Lord
Playing that harp like it was a harpsichord
King David, the warrior poet
A gangsta rapper but he probably didn’t know it
The greatest lyricist whoever lived
But before he was the king, he was a fugitive
Always on the lam, one step ahead of the law
‘Cause the king at the time was his father-in-law
When his childhood hero turned into a villain
David’s solution was to say more Tehillim
Yo happy is the nation that does it this way
Yo sometimes I feel like I got nothing to say
But ashrei

chorus:
Ashrei yoshvei vetecha
Od yehallelcha sela
God is great, just ask Christopher Hitchens
Merciful to all creatures according to our religion
Hasidim always praising You in every generation
On every YouTube channel, every radio station
The King of Kings, yo, forever and ever
Distributing health food, just like Unilever
You open your hand, satisfy our desires
Now our cup is overflowing like a bonus multiplier
Saving all the heros, destroying all the villians
You can read all about it in the pages of Tehillim
Yo happy is the nation that does it this way
Yo sometimes I feel like I got nothing to say
But ashrei

(chorus)

I like electric guitars, and electric cars and electrical engineering
But what are those irritating lyrics that I’m hearing?
I wish heavy metal would be always instrumental
But usually it’s mostly pathetic and sentimental
Music ruined video games, but rock and roll
Was ruined by the lyrics of this melody I stole
And hip hop? Well, that was ruined by Evil Jared
‘Cause all of this swearing has no redeeming social merit
He’s a guitar hero but a lyrical villian
So you keep your Bloodhound Gang and please pass me the Tehillim
Yo happy is the nation that does it this way
Yo sometimes I feel like I got nothing to say
But ashrei

(chorus)

The Enemies of Reason: A Platonic Dialogue by MC Complete

Daniel: Why don’t you believe in the principle of noncontradiction?
Graham: As I explained in my blog post, the Liar Paradox proves that some things are both true and false.
Daniel: But the Liar Paradox is cyclical. Cyclical propositions are meaningless.
Graham: Actually, the proposition “all cyclical propositions are meaningless” *is* a cyclical proposition.
Daniel: Which would seem to imply that it’s meaningless.
Graham: And how can you solve a paradox with a meaningless proposition?
Daniel: Hmmm, I hadn’t thought of that. But doesn’t mainstream logic assume that ZFC solves the Liar Paradox?
Graham: ZFC is a formality. If you take it as a proposition logico philosophicus, it’s cyclical, and therefore declares itself meaningless.
Daniel: But can’t you separate the rules for constructing propositions from the system of propositions themselves?
Graham: Some people think you can. You’re welcome to try if you have the time. But you need to explain who rules the rules.
Daniel: True...I’m starting to see how the “outlawing cycles” approach may be a dead end. And your paraconsistent logic does seem like a simple solution. But maybe there’s a simpler one.
Graham: What do you have in mind?
Daniel: Maybe we should just forget about logic altogether. Who needs logic?
Graham: Whoa, Daniel. Slow down there. You’re throwing out the family with the bathwater.
Daniel: We had mathematical proofs before Frege. Have proofs really gotten better? As Logicomix points out, symbolic logic proved to be extremely useful in telling computers what to do, but is it really useful in resolving The Problems of Philosophy?
Graham: Logic can certainly help expose philosophical fallacies.
Daniel: You mean, like the ontological argument?
Graham: Touche, touche. But come on. Without logic, how can you start with premises and arrive at a conclusion? How can you make inferences?
Daniel: The same way you do anything. With intuition.
Graham: What do you mean?
Daniel: When you start with some premise and you infer a conclusion, your confidence in the conclusion is proportional to your confidence in the premise and your confidence in the inference. In other words, you’re convinced to the extent that the argument is convincing.
Graham: Sure. So logic gives you rules of inference, that you can use to infer things.
Daniel: But maybe logic is a mistake. Maybe there are no rules. Maybe each inference is its own axiom. Its own act of gnosis.
Graham: You and your gnosis again. You know, Daniel, you’re starting to creep me out. How can I even have a Platonic dialogue with you? You talk like an analytic philosopher, but deep down you’re just another mystic.
Daniel: I think Winston Churchill said it best. “He who is not an analytic philosopher at 20 has never been young; he who is not a mystic at 30 has never matured.”

If I Only had a Brain: A Platonic Dialogue by MC Complete

Daniel: What do you think about personal identity?
David: I don’t believe in it. Cogito ergo sum and all that. I believe I dealt a conclusive death blow to that idea in my book.
Daniel: But you weren’t able to refute my “apparent past” argument. (See http://mccomplete.blogspot.com/2010/05/ideas-matter-platonic-dialogue-by-mc.html and http://mccomplete.blogspot.com/2010/04/science-does-not-make-predictions.html).
David: I don’t know if I’m really convinced by it yet, but no, I wasn’t able to refute it. It was very crafty.
Daniel: Thanks. So, for the purposes of the current discussion, would you be willing to assume that my apparent past argument is sound?
David: Only if you give it an ism.
Daniel: What ism?
David: If it’s a philosophical theory, it needs an ism. Every philosophical theory has an ism.
Daniel: Come to think of it, in my last post, I called it “truth-value realism”.
Daivd: Too long-winded. Can you come up with something more succinct?
Daniel: OK, how about “virtualism”?
David: Why “virtualism”?
Daniel: It’s the “apparent” part of the apparent past. The idea is that the world of appearances, let’s call it the virtual reality, shares a lot of information with the real world, whether or not the real world actually exists. So most of our beliefs about science, math, and common sense are well-founded if they are reinterpreted as statements about the virtual world.
David: OK, that’s fine for now, but “virtualism” sounds like it might already be taken.
Daniel: Yeah, I’ll have to check Plato when I get back to my computer.
David: So what does virtualism have to say about personal identity?
Daniel: Well, viirtual objects can be said to exist because they are generalizations over the apparent past.
David: OK.
Daniel: And people are just virtual objects, right?
David: OK.
Daniel: So I’m a virtual object too. Just like everyone else.
David: Well, “David Hume”, “Daniel Dennet”, and “Bob Stalnaker” are all virtual objects. But why is “David Hume” me, while “Daniel Dennet” and “Bob Stalnaker” are not me?
Daniel: Because I never see my face except in a mirror.
David: So that’s the definition of “me”? The person whose face I only see in a mirror?
Daniel: Kind of. I mean, there are all kinds of special things about “me”, i.e. “MC Complete”. If “MC Complete” stubs his toe, I experience pain, but if someone else stubs their toe, I don’t experience pain. The visual memory stream is kind of analogous to a video (although of course there are many differences), and the virtual camera is located more or less at the same place as “MC Complete”’s eyes.
David: Behind my eyelids, apparently, because when David Hume closes his eyes, I don’t see anything.
Daniel: Exactly.
David: Very crafty, as usual. But you’ll notice that I don’t have a brain.
Daniel: What?
David: I’ve seen my hands and my feet. I’ve even seen my face, in a mirror. But I’ve never seen my brain.
Daniel: But people have brains. There’s tons of evidence. Autopsies, dissections, x-rays, surgery...
David: Of course.
Daniel: And I am a person.
David: Of course.
Daniel: Well, therefore I have a brain, don’t I? Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal?
David: Not so fast. In Apparent Pastitstan, that inference is invalid.
Daniel: But I invented virtualism. What do you know about it that I don’t?
David: “People have brains” is a generalization over the apparent past. “David Hume has hands” is a generalization over the apparent past. But “David Hume has a brain” is not a generalization over the apparent past.
Daniel: That kind of sounds right, I guess...
David: As far as I can tell, your virtualism reverses the conventional notions of induction and deduction. Induction is inference from the specific to the general, whereas deduction is inference from the general to the specific. It’s conventionally assumed that deduction is more well-founded than induction. But virtual inductive inferences are very well-founded. They take a set of specific instances and generalize over those instances, without attempting to address anything outside those instances. And conversely, when you take a virtualistic interpretation of “the general”, inference from the general to the specific is simply invalid.
Daniel: That’s kind of cool. I’ll take credit for it.
David: Kind of solves the mind-body problem, doesn’t it?
Daniel: The mind-body problem? I just solved the problem of induction, and now I’ve solved the mind-body problem?
David: Kind of...I mean, think about it. The mind-body problem is really the mind-brain problem, right?
Daniel: Right...
David: But the mind-brain problem is only a problem if people have both minds and brains. And virtualistically speaking, the sets are disjoint. How can there be a mind-brain problem if some people have minds but not brains, i.e. myself, and some people have brains but not minds, i.e. all you zombies?