Philosophy & Ethics

IS THE MIND UNIQUE FOR EACH PERSON?   Ayad Gharbawi   October 24, 2009 – Damascus     When we ask ‘who am I’? let us say, that we are asking the question with the view that we are inquiring within the timeframe of that precise moment the question is being asked. Who am I ‘now’, at this moment? How do we define ourselves when asking that question within the time frame (TF) asked for? Any mind, or observer (Ob), when thinking about himself, and when thinking about ‘who’ he is at that moment, will necessarily be able to think and visualise a finite number of thoughts,…

SAD OF THE EARTH Ayad Gharbawi As thinking creatures we must evolve mentally towards achieving a humanity within ourselves for whereas physical growth proceeds unguided mental growth requires a continual and firm guidance on the part of ourselves with the help of society and culture. So people believe, as adults, that they are ‘human beings’. Biologically so, but mentally they are not for the truth is most of Mankind do not struggle mentally in increasing their awareness of life’s constituents. The average person is no Ghandi or Martin Luther King or Guevara. To be ‘human’ means mental…

I do believe that a vast majority of men and women are evil and that furthermore we really ought to deal with this fact rather than being politically correct and ‘believing’ that all Men are inherently good. On what do I base my saying that Man is evil? Well, for a start, why not take a look at Man’s history? In the course of the 5,000 years of our known history, we find that human beings have repeatedly and with the most natural ease reverted to evil in their daily lives. For a start, we can look with horror at the number of wars, battles, skirmishes and other military activities that Man…

There has been much discussion lately on this blog and elsewhere about the relationships among skepticism, atheism, and politics. I have roundly criticized Richard Dawkins for extending scientific skepticism into areas that are more properly the domain of philosophical analysis, as well as Penn and Teller and Michael Shermer for doing the same with politics to support their libertarian views. Of course, even a cursory reader of this blog will easily find my own pieces about religion and politics, which may make it seem like I’m a sinner throwing stones at my fellow skeptics. In reality, this…

Mariano Crociata: a name, a promise. The general secretary of CEI (the Italian Episcopal Conference) secures a spot in the front page of Italian newspapers today by declaring that pharmacists in Italy should be allowed to object to the distribution of pharmaceuticals enabling " clearly immoral choices", like abortion. I wonder why he stopped short of asking for the removal of condoms from the counters. Hmmm, let me guess: a sudden change of mind about birth control ? Or just the knowledge that it would be too large an economical loss for pharmacy owners to self-flagellate that way ? RU-486,…

STUDIES ON ‘REALITY’: CHANGING FACES IN ONE FACE   Ayad Gharbawi   October 16, 2009     Why is it that one face can have so many different variations? One face can literally have an endless number of different images that can be dissimilar to the so-called ‘original’ face. So is there an ‘original’ face? No, there is not, precisely due to the existence of these unlimited number of faces that we can see in that one face. So, then what is the ‘face’ on an individual if there isn’t ‘one’ face? The answer is that all the images are the ‘truth’ of what the person in…

The Domain of Morality Illustrates Religious Nepotism and Nepotistic Religiousness.(The Domain is something that I have touched upon in my other posts, for those of you who have read my work, I apologise for repeating myself. If you have an understanding of the Domain please feel free to scroll down to the line marking the beginning of my main argument.)     The Domain of Morality itself is the current accepted standardization of opinion. It is simply a scale that is arranged in what we would consider an “atypical political right/left” scenario thusly:     …

The Constituents of the Mind, (com), as I have stated previously, are composed of several attributes which we have neatly written down. However, we now need to discuss further this study (See article, ‘Constituents of the Mind’ (com)). It needs to be said that each and every attribute, or mentioned (com) is by no means so cut and dry. Just like the infinite number of varying colours, hues, shades in a colour that exist, so too, these variations exist for each and every (com). Thus, Sound, Odour, Emotion, have an infinite ‘number’ of variations and these can and do interact with each other.…

I don't hate computational biology, but I've got my issues with the way the field is often practiced. Most of my complaints boil down to this: if a computational biologist is not contributing to our understanding of biology, and not contributing to fundamental computer science either, then what's the point? What are we learning from the research? The problem usually crops up when computational biologists don't seem to care whether their computational results correspond with any biological reality. If a computer model or algorithm is able to (more or less) recapitulate existing data, then that…

In the last article we considered the formation of choices as providing a set of predetermined responses to various situations.  It is this phase of data gathering and assessment that sets the groundwork for our moral responsibility. Specifically it is erroneous to consider that choices are evaluated and determined solely at the point of action, but rather, default states may well be set within the brain based on our training and indoctrination.  It is these default states that represent the possibility of choices that we can base a decision on. The shorter the time interval to make…