Friday's Class

Friday's class was particularly interesting. The reason is that, personally, I am very interested in the intricacies of argument and persuasion. Many people believe that by making a logical argument, they have swayed someone to their side; after all, it is logical. The arguer needs to understand that many people don't want to change their minds. It's not a pleasant thing to change your mind, especially about deeply held beliefs on personal topics, because it entails admitting you were wrong. Most people don't like admitting that they were wrong, especially when they see the person they are arguing against as an "enemy" or someone who has no empathy to their position. Think about it from your perspective, would you admit you were wrong to someone you don't particularly like, someone who undercut you with an argument and made no attempt to reconcile your feeling in the debate? In most cases, you will say no. This has incredible implications for persuasion, however. The arguer who is empathetic and able to reconcile the oppositions feelings, as well as look after their interests while attacking their position, can make great moves as far as getting others to come to their side.

Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy theorists are a mixed blessing. On the one hand, they keep the people skeptical of conventional wisdom, and keep some degree of skepticism towards the government (which is a good thing, so long as we recognize the difference between healthy distrust and anarchy). On the other hand, some of these nut jobs blow things way out of proportion. In recent years, folks have gotten the idea that there is this group of powerful individuals that hang over our heads, and plot the destruction of all the poor and middle class individuals in their back room meetings. I'm here to tell you, that's not how it works. Just because a group of rich and powerful people get together on the weekend does not mean they are planning some attack on your lifestyle. People that are wealthy and powerful are, wait for it, wealthy and powerful. And yes, many times they get their way. But there is no conspiracy to change your life or take it away. Most of the wealthy folks understand the importance of the free market capitalist system, because that's how they got to be wealthy and powerful.

What is Mind?

    This week in philosophy we discussed the question: “What is mind?” The question is very difficult to answer. Many believe they have the answer, and that it is quite simple; but when they actually try to articulate it, it becomes clear that we really don’t know what mind is. By and large the most common answer to “what is mind” is: the mind is our soul, it is an intangible “being” that controls our actions, and allows us to answer the “why” questions. The issue raised against the idea that the mind is something separate from the brain is this: Where is the mind located? How can a thing that has no defined location, shape, or size persist without something giving it representation? And, most importantly, how does it interact with our brain to cause movement. If we claim that mind is separate from matter. We are committed to the idea that the mind somehow motivates the brain to do certain things. (ie. The mind some how controls the neurons in the brain, to send signals to the arm, to pick up a cup.) Yet this does not appear possible. All motor functions of the body, and motivations for why we do things are explainable on a neurochemical level. Even if we purport that the mind exists, we are still left with finding out how nothing interacts with something; how this nothingness of no defined shape, location, or extension can somehow spur into action, neurons within the brain. Many who argue for the existence of God resist the idea that nothing can cause something, I too follow the same line of logic in my reasoning here. It makes no sense that their should be a mind (a nothing) causing something to happen in the brain, when the explanation can be the brain itself.

    So then, where am I? Where do I, Jackson Pacific, reside? What makes me what and who I am? If mind is actually just matter, and all I am is a collection of brain states, then how come I can experience things differently than other beings. How come I can look a painting and see something with true, deep meaning to me; while another person passes by that painting like it was nothing. Why can a certain song make me cry, and another person laugh? The best answer we have seems to come from the idea of “tabula rusa,” or “we are all born as ‘blank slates’ on which experience compounds, knowledge is sought, and ideas are built.” Following this logic, when you have a “subjective” experience such as enjoying jazz music, what is really happening is your brain is releasing dopamine, serotonin, and a slightly higher than average amount of adrenaline, giving you a good feeling, making you feel like you were born to love jazz music. How you got to that point is a question of great debate. Many neurologists purport that, for example, you had a naturally exciting experience, such as an interaction with your mother to the tune of jazz. The brain then contributed in small amount the release of that dopamine to the playing of the jazz music, and as that experience gets further away, the accuracy of the reason of the happy state diminishes, and your brain contributes more and more happiness to the playing of jazz music.

    One of the great defenders of the mind/body dualism was Rene Descartes. Descartes believed that there actually is two kinds of “things,” mind and matter. He defined mind in the classic way we all think of it, as an invisible, intangible thing that controls our body, and persists through time even when the body “runs out.” (The term mind, by his definition, is interchangeable with soul). He attempts to show that we can have a mind, a mind that isn’t just collections and interactions of matter, by showing that we can all think of experiencing our lives “out of body.” He invited the reader to imagine that one day they woke up without a body. So I tried it, and yes, he is right; it is possible to imagine yourself going through your day without a body. He then invites the reader to imagine going through his day without a mind; same body, but no mind. This is obviously an impossibility. He then states that since we can imagine our minds without our bodies, but not our bodies without our minds, that minds must a) be more important, and b) Exist! I have one major problem with Descartes argument. When he tells us to imagine our lives without our bodies, what we are imagining is our minds without our bodies, moving around and INTERACTING WITH OTHER MATTER. This is key. Imagine with me for a moment, your mind outside of your body, walking around and interacting with other minds outside of their bodies. It can’t be done. What would that even look like? Let’s say it could be done, even so, we would need a setting, a material setting, a tangible place.  It seems to me common sense, that a thing that has no definite location, mass, and doesn't occupy any space cannot interact with a thing that does. If one concedes that nothing can cause movement of something, then the “universe from nothing” arguments have new base, and vice versa.

So the ultimate question is: Is it possible for an intangible thing with no size, shape, location, extension, mass etc… to control our brains, and then leave our brains once they die, to head to an intangible location?

Right to Life Dinner

This past Monday, I had the privilege of volunteering at the Grand Rapids Right to Life Dinner. For anyone that doesn't know, the right to life dinner is an event held for folks that wish to take a stand against abortion. I think it is one of the best events the city of Grand Rapids holds, and it does quite well in spreading the good message.
Each year, the board selects a keynote speaker. The speaker must be someone who advocates life and wishes to stop abortion. This years speaker was Dr. Benjamin Carson. Dr. Carson has saved so many lives over the years as a pediatric neurosurgeon, and more than anyone, understands the true value of each individual life. I give my praises and best wishes to Dr. Carson as he continues to travel the nation and spread the word.

Labor Market in China

I recently read an article about the coming demise of the labor market in China. The article pointed towards demographic trends and showed that the labor market peaked in 2010, and will be cut down by as much as 18% by 2032. The author also made it very clear that this spells disaster for China. I am here to convince you otherwise; or at least, to convince you that it doesn't have to spell disaster for China. What we need to look for as far as growth in China is the expansion of productivity per worker, and an increasing number of knowledge workers. In the past, our only clue as to how well China was doing was the expansion of their already massive labor force. That is now in decline. It is now the job of china to get past state run institutions and begin to value free market principles. Couple that better education (not to mention incentive to innovate through free markets) and China could very well become quite the economic engine. Step number one towards China's rise will be breaking up big government run institutions and putting them in the private sector, that is, in the hands of investors who can better manage chunks of them. China's largest tobacco company is state run, break that up. Oil, break that up. China can be great, we don't have to accept their loss of workforce as inevitable decline.

Friday's Class

This past week's thought and writing class was quite the learning experience. We learned about certain methods of storytelling and characterization through a movie called "Carrie." In the movie, Carrie is a socially awkward misfit that is tortured by all the "normal" children. The movie is quite thought provoking because it forces us to choose the lesser of evils. What the kids did to Carrie was certainly unjust, but what Carrie did to all those kids at the prom may have been more unjust. Was it? Would she have done it had those kids not committed such an injustice in the first place? Or maybe the mom is the ultimate wrongdoer. Had she not raised Carrie to be such a recluse and out of touch with the outer world, maybe Carrie would not have reacted in such a way. But were the mom's intentions good? If they were, does it matter? An unjust act is an unjust act, independent of intentions. (Some people see murder as justified, but does that make it so?)

Alibaba

Last Friday, "China's Amazon" finally went public. The E-Commerce giant known as "Alibaba" opened for trading at sixty eight dollars a share, and closed it's first trading day at ninety two dollars and seventy three cents. For those of you that don't know what Alibaba does, Alibaba is an online marketplace, specializing in wholesale industrial equipment. Businesses can buy from other businesses, (and quite large purchases, I must add) right there on Alibaba, without ever seeing a firm representative. Multi-million dollar transactions take place on Alibaba every day.

To put in my two cents about the stock: BUY SHARES NOW! China's construction industry is going to see a boom in the next few years as they modernize around their big cities. Guess where the best place to buy steel and wood in bulk is? Get them while they are only ninety two dollars a piece.