Spelunking the Universe
Posts tagged Philosophy
Rico Examines “People, Politics, and Pretense.”
Apr 4th
Basically anyone who has read an article about politics has seen an astounding statement of just how “Out of Touch” the politicians involved are. When people talk about the efficiency of businesses versus government run operations there is a distinct separation of the two. As if there is some magical race of beings that are running one versus the other.
Lets first establish what people run, people run everything, they run businesses, they run families, they run schools, they run hospitals, they run governments, and they run religions. There is absolutely nothing different about this between them all, each is run by people and each has people picked in some manner of fashion for that position. Perhaps they established kin through procreation, or established quality of talent through election or hiring, or they’ve established belief through convincing parable. Which by the way is a word everyone should use today, try it.
There is no reason why one should assume that a government cannot run something as well or better than a corporation. Likewise there is no reason to assume that a corporation cannot run something as well or better than the government. Mix and match any of the above examples and the statement is the same. It is not that these organizations cannot do it, it is that they do not do it.
The fault of course, as it must, falls upon people as a whole. People decide what is an acceptable level of accomplishment for each organization and that acceptance is what decides the level of success the organization performs to. If you accept your neighbors being terrible parents you have set a precedent that that level of parenting is all that is necessary. If you accept that your government cannot run anything properly they will then achieve that level of success. The same for schools, faiths, and hospitals.
Absolutely everything in this world run by humans will run at a level that is accepted by the people. Because absolutely everything in this world run by humans is (tautology time) run by humans. So they function under the same rules, the same psychological triggers, and will all rise or fall because of the same variables.
Don’t ever accept anything because of what organization it is a part of if the outcome is not to the standards you feel fair. There is no inherent static wall that an organization cannot rise above, everything is limited only by the expectations of global society. It is, in its entirely, no more complicated than that.
Coming this Week on TheIOS:
Rico Examines “Video Games: Graphics Vs. Gameplay.”
Rico Examines “The Beauty of Mathematics.”
ADIOS: The King of Spes: Votum.
IIWP (If I was President): Taxation
How many people are you?
Jan 7th
I’ve been on a journey of sorts through my life, to prove to folks that likely nothing is black and white. Now honestly, could something like “How many people are you?” be that complicated of a question? I mean obviously, you are one person, I am one person, it seems so simple.
Well lets go on a very short journey, through an entirely plausible series of events, merely limited by current medical technology. I’ll then ask a few simple questions and we’ll see how straight forward they are.
For reasons unknown, Markus, has entered a hospital to have a peculiar surgery done. The hospital is going to cut Markus completely in half from tip of his head to his groin. The brain itself can survive as damaged as 50%, which means that a perfect cut with optimum tools and technology would leave two halves that only are limited by the organs that remain. We would need to either build or donate an extra heart and any other organs that are not perfectly split. Essentially the ‘open’ side would then be closed with a bionic enclosure. Nothing fancy, an apparatus that helps enclose both sides so that now we have two living halves that both function.
My first question is a simple one. What would each side know? Would one side be able to speak and the other not? Does the brain store certain information in a raid between both halves? What would the halves say to one another?
Perhaps some deeper more philosophical questions. Would the halves themselves feel one another? In theory if we have a soul we would be dealing with one entity that now experiences two separate sets of sensation. What metaphysical ramifications come from each not communicating with the other?
Now I ask you. Given this situation that could quite easily happen with some small gains in the medical field. Is this just one person or two people? If you argue that it is one person, would you arrest one half if the other (unbeknownst to it) robbed a bank? If you didn’t arrest both of them then you are acknowledging that they are both separate people.
But now we have a new question. At what point did we take one person and make them two? What was it that defines a person? Is it simply the bridge between the two hemispheres? Or is it merely how many functioning bodies are present. In the face of the split man you have taken one functioning body and made it into two with a few modifications.
So that’s my conundrum. A problem that could be so easily fixed by just having a brain that does not operate when the hemispheres are disconnected from one another. This of course isn’t my finest work but the simple scenario and questions should keep folks busy which is what is important.
Non-existing existence
May 22nd
“There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know.” – Donald Rumsfeld
For those that peeked up from their sessions of WoW the above quote might be familiar. From what I take from it, there are things that exist that we know exist, there are things that exist that we don’t know exist, then there are things the we don’t know that we don’t know they exist. Which to the casual reader might come off as “Oh so you basically said the same thing twice.”
So is there actual unknown unknowns? Or is this a case of poor labeling. Modern astronomers might ask the question “What will you find at the end of a black hole?” However if you go far back enough people didn’t even know black holes existed. This would classify to Rumsfeld as an unknown unknown, but to me it is just a further stripping back of your basic everyday unknown.
Essentially knowledge is not a light switch, we do not suddenly know something is true one day, things gradually become more and more understandable as we dig deeper and deeper into the make of them and their interactions with the universe around them. At no point is anything absolutely certain on a scientific level. You can make literally trillions of subjective statements that appear to be objective and think you’ve proven something absolute but in the end it all comes back to your 5 senses, your language, and the true meaning behind everything involved with that postulate.
Honestly once you are done parsing just about anything you once thought was rock solid it falls apart, as stated in a very early post here, if it explains in absolution it is absolutely wrong (I used different phrasing before, I thought this sounded swanky though).
The existence of a non-existent thing is a paradox of language and should be treated as such. Throwing on unknown onto unknown is redundancy and should be treated as such (if you ask me…which you didn’t). Sure one could argue that god is a nonexistent existence, a being that doesn’t exist by the laws of the universe (thusly being nonexistent) however does exist outside of those laws (thusly being existent) however to that I would slap myself in the head, head butt my keyboard, and likely take a nap. Because once again once you start parsing and digging deep just about anything sounds absolutely stupid.
But who knows, perhaps with further understanding of quantum physics and all these theoretical particles we will find out that indeed in the physical world there exists a non redundant case of unknown unknowns, about that time though I assume we’ll have mixed the genetic makeup of Pigs with Albatross so that we will have simultaneously dealt with an old and abused saying and proved a currently nonsensical modern one.
One can dream.
Taken a good look at a Tyrannosaurus lately?
Apr 1st
You ever had a bombshell drop in a class and had nobody but you seem truly interested. I would appear that inside the bone of a Tyrannosaurus Rex they found actual fleshy bits!
http://www.smm.org/buzz/blog/tyrannosaurus_rex_flesh_pictures
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7285683/
However as with all things it would appear that UW is trying to crush this wonderful bit of news for me (Darn you UW). So I’m not entirely sure whether or not I’m reading about the same bone or if one bone has flesh and another is sludge or if indeed that one both is just sludge (even though those scans that look like bird flesh are pretty convincing). But it gives some hope, I don’t feel that any dinosaur could function properly with our current environment compared to theirs. Perhaps we could work to make pygmy versions of them. However considering that you can’t even have cats without people letting them into the wild (or pythons for that matter) I suppose this would certainly end poorly.
There are constant reminders that the most unlikely of events can indeed happen. Offhand I don’t know the principle but there is the idea that anything that can happen will happen (or has). I like this for one reason, if we are to assume that any value greater than 0 is possible (that is anything that can happen can happen…pretty novel concept) then it would seem pretty silly to assume anything that has a 1 in a trillion chance is never going to happen.
Yet you will find people constantly treat it like that. “There is a one in a gajillion chance you’d have written the exact thing as that other person on your own.” Yet the fact remains the original person wrote it on their own. Likewise if there is any chance then it may have indeed happened. Just seems silly to have fractions over a hundredth if we aren’t going to treat them as possible.
Ah…at any rate it is good to see some possible truth from Jurassic park 
.
Words given too much credit.
Mar 31st
Whenever a person of interest (generally coined ‘celebrity’) they are put under an unusually high level of excess and I feel unnecessary stress. One thing in particular is the idea of ‘thinking before you speak’. For the vast majority of people I do think there is a level of thought always joined with the act of communication it is something of a necessity. We all make mistakes in what we are saying, that is to say simply that occasionally we say orange when we meant to say carpool or something like that.
What I don’t feel is fair however is to assume that words have power. Words are no different than currency, essentially all the money you own is only worth as much as you and your social region believe they are worth. There is also that whole exchange rate globally but for the most part a nation could ignore that and still function pretty well. All our words and the emotions we tie to them are entirely personal, there is no automatic response to any words. If there was telling a baby with a sweet tone to go fuck themselves would not elicit the same response as it does from anyone who has been ‘lectured’ or ‘indoctrinated’ into the local lingo. Indeed cursing is all in all just as harmless as discussing vegetable preferences.
However we in a pretty sizeable amount give far far too much credit to words. What most recently elicited this train of thought was that “Special Olympics” comment of the President on the Tonight Show. He equated his bowling skills to something you would see in the Special Olympics, a simple enough example that produces a relatively vivid and likely consistent image amongst anyone who hears it.
People are up in arms about how he should apologize and that while it would have been ok for him to say that before he was President it is not alright anymore. Which to me is highly confusing. If an action is not alright in one instance I would assume that it should either be wrong in all instances or be reexamined.
A persons feelings about themselves, about their world, and about basically anything should not be so easily swayed by the simple speaking of others. This is akin to walking outside, feeling a cool breeze and killing yourself because of it. It’s a radical response to a relatively unimportant gesture. While of course these are all just personal opinion and suggestions it does pay to point out that my own personal life became easily exponentially easier to maintain once I stopped caring about the random banter of others.
Words are wonderful in their artistic quality, but just as you shouldn’t stop eating or lose your self confidence when you see the Mona Lisa, you also shouldn’t be dropping proverbial bricks every time someone says something. Especially considering how often these responses end up being hypocritical. You can’t be treated fairly if everyone feels you need to be treated special. To put it simply, if you can make comments about anything you can make comments about everything. Anything less and we risk (and indeed do) begin enforcing slanted and almost exclusively hypocritical rulings on the realm and limitations of language.
A Fairly Confusing Trade
Mar 23rd
As was spoken of briefly in the last update I find it extremely unusual that fair trade is an opt-in system. Essentially it is universally agreed in this country that all companies are treating anyone possible poorly unless otherwise specified. It would seem more reasonable to have all companies that do not want to treat people like people could opt-out of being labeled as fair trade.
It’s odd though that this is where the world is. One would hope that thousands of years into civilized nations that at some point someone would have raised their hand and said “Hey lets stop looking for what is cheap and look for what is humane.” It’s true that treating people like dogs (figuratively speaking) can be cheap, in fact it almost always is cheap. Likewise absolutely ignoring environmental impact is equally efficient at saving money. However at what point is the income superfluous? What can a company do with 2 trillion dollars that it couldn’t have done with 1? There are plenty of things I can think of but there is an unusual difficulty in targeting a positive advantage to that extra chunk of change but perhaps visitors here are more creative.
So also to the superfluous nature of the increased income comes the danger, especially now, of people discovering the dark dirty secrets of the company. Wal-mart has been getting increasingly more famous for the absolutely unacceptable treatment of its employees and Quasi-employees, those being illegal immigrants who are manipulated into working far longer than legal for fear of being deported. The Boy Scouts have recently made headlines for a large portion (I believe it was roughly 33%) making money by performing some exceptionally aggressive logging. Then we have the most obvious example of AIG and similar companies in the recent recession. All sharing the common trait of doing the wrong thing to make a little bit more money, sure to the average penguin the amount they save is amazing, however when looking at the relative gains its almost inconsequential.
I think the first step succeeding as a nation (any nation not simply the US) is to not congratulate people for doing what should come naturally. Instead you should make known those who would sooner make a bit more while sacrificing any semblance of humanity their company has remaining. It is a fairly confusing trade-off that, if asked before the start of human dominance upon Earth, I would never see being debated.
Black Holes and Human Brains
Mar 21st
This is a bit of a thought experiment but I’ve come to think that perhaps the human brain is an example of evolutionary pit falling. I’d use a better term but my brain is kind of not running on all cylinders at the moment itself!
In the universe there are many objects of varying sizes and gravitational pulls. It would seem obvious that at a certain point that gravity becomes so great that it just continually compounds upon itself and creates an extremely massive singular point. Essentially whenever you are dealing with variable systems there seems to be a real world situation where there is a runaway train effect that creates otherwise seemingly impossible (or extremely unlikely events).
The Human brain seems to be another example of this. I have a strong feeling that the evolution of the human brain works in a similar fashion. This may be an event that is unlikely to happen again for quite sometime. When the original mutations hit and the earliest humans did grow larger brains (in whatever manner or region that they did) it must have been an extremely helpful mutation. This was much like that first bit of mass past the critical threshold in space. As more and more generations of this species reproduced the changes were reinforced more and more and the brain kept growing progressively larger.
I imagine larger brains are evolutionarily extremely handy (extreme being the popular theme this post) however they are not biologically primary mutations. There is some sort of required event, perhaps a very large amount of food to help lessen the necessity of other advantages (like strength or senses). The human skull did change allowing more space for the brain and that change was the weakening of the jaw muscles. Perhaps the major food source of Humans changed in some great manner and that change increased the amount of food ingested per human per life.
It’s an interesting question, while mutations are hardly intentional it does seem that certain mutations do cause absolutely amazing continual mutations that lead to extraordinary organisms.
Extra Note: I will warn you in advance. If these existential posts are a bit annoying for you the next week might be difficult for you! I’m on vacation so it’s probably going to be a week of thought experiments. I will try my best to make them as inspirational as possible.
Metaphysics Finale (Part 4 of 4)
Mar 16th
With my final coming tomorrow it appears it is time to finish the last of the topics to prepare for what will likely be a very unhappy examination. Seeing as what is the proper way of achieving an A (Carbon copying what the professor says to the book) is not how I like to learn I’m probably looking at another C.
That mini rant out of the way lets collect the 4 parts in a series of links for you:
Part 1:
Formulating and Explaining: Determinism.
Presenting, Explaining, and Evaluating: An Argument Against Moral Responsibility.
Part 2:
Presenting, Explaining, and Evaluating: The Kid Patriot Argument Against Soft Determinism.
Formulating and Explaining: Hard Determinism, Soft Determinism, Indeterminism.
Part 3:
Formulating and Explaining: Volitional Indeterminism.
Presenting, Explaining, and Evaluating: Volitional Indeterminism, The Ernest Patriot Argument Against Simple Indeterminism, The Vera Patriot Argument Against.
Part 4 (Below):
Formulating and Explaining: The Theory of Agency, Fatalism, Theism, and Atheism.
Presenting, Explaining, and Evaluating: What I take to be the best argument against The Theory of Agency, The Argument for Fatalism, What I take to be the best argument for Theism, and What I take to be the best argument for Atheism.
— — — — — — —
So with that out of the way lets begin with a slew of formulations and explanations!
Externally Determined is defined as A being made physically necessary by events outside of A’s agent.
Example: Once you have jumped it is Externally Determined that you will come back to Earth. (via Gravity)
Libertarian Actions are defined as Actions that are not Externally Determined and are caused by their agent.
Example: The act of jumping is not externally determined (you don’t have to jump) and doing so is caused by the agent (you).
These definitions are important to help further understand the Theory of Agency:
The Theory of Agency
(1) There are some Libertarian Actions.
(2) People are acting freely whenever they perform Libertarian actions.
(3) People are morally responsible anytime they perform Libertarian actions.
The first tenant of Agency states that not all actions in the universe are forced by nature or natural law. It is not a universal statement and because of this even if a single action is Libertarian that would entail that some sum of actions are libertarian thusly making the first true. Secondly by the definition of Libertarian actions any action performed by oneself without external demands is a free actions. Finally the last tenant states that when you act of your own agency without outside forces you are morally responsible.
The best objection to the theory of Agency is the one of Unintelligibility. Which looks as follows.
The Mystery Objection to the Theory of Agency
(1) The Idea of Agent Causation is Unintelligible.
(2) if (1), then the Theory of Agency is Unintelligible.
———————————
(3) The Theory of Agency is Unintelligible.
The above argument states that the concept of Agent Causation is unintelligible. A simple example is the phrase “The baseball broke the window.” Whenever people say such a thing what they really mean is that the child who hit the baseball in the direction that they did broke the window. However even this statement is missing out on various other agents at play in the situation. Our languages functional level is not at a range of detail to properly detail a proper Agent Causation paradigm. Because of this any attempt to address the Agent Causation omits important factors that render it unintelligible. Furthermore in order to make the concept intelligible it requires the omission of a confounding amount of information. Intuitively when examining the idea of agency we find ourselves being very ambiguous.
Next we have the wonderful world of f..f…Fatalism! *gouges out his own eyes* Ok. Calm down Rico…We’ll make this quick because I’ve already ranted about this particular topic for 2 full days before.
Fatalism
(1) There exists now a set of propositions that explains exactly what might happen in the future.
(2) All propositions are either true or false.
(3) If (1) and (2), there exists a set of true propositions already depicting the future.
(4) If there now exists a set of true propositions the future is already Unavoidable.
——————————
(5) The future is Unavoidable.
The first tenant states that if you were to take every possible set of events and combine it in inverse manner with every other possible event that inevitably one of the near infinitely many possible outcomes would cover all of what might happen in the future. In Layman’s the idea is that you start with TFF, then TTF, then TTT, and so on until you’ve hit every combination. Except that you have unimaginably large quantities of lines instead of I believe the 9 possible from a series of 3 events. Properly written all propositions are either true or false, however it goes further than that, all propositions are false until true. This is the staple behind the concept of sanity, when you start believing in false propositions you are clinically insane. The third tenant states that there exists now a set of true propositions, it is only a half true statement. There exists now a set of propositions that will be true in the future. Tenant four simply states that if we already have defined our future than our future is unavoidable. Originally I felt that this argument was valid and perhaps sound. Now I would state that it is merely valid, IF all the above lines were true the conclusion would be true. However the above lines are not all true.
Quite simple the second Tenant is false (or at least gravely misstated). All propositions are false until they become true. While there exists a set of false propositions that will someday all be true that is only because there is a set of false propositions for all possible outcomes. Because of this it is impossible for one set of these propositions to not be filled entirely. That is the nature of infinity, it covers all possible ranges and because of this it governs absolutely nothing. The future is in no way unavoidable, however a future is. But really there is nothing fatalist about a future in that manner, unless you take the point that you’ll likely die someday. But that’s an philosophical thought for another day. For those who want a further explanation the breaking of the second tenant likewise breaks the third and fourth tenant. Leaving Fatalism with only a single tenant (tenant 1) that in no way concretely leads to tenant 5.
Now lets move on to the mightiest of all arguments (supposedly) the arguments of theism and atheism.
Theism: There is a god.
Atheism: There is no god.
There it was good to get that out of the way. Oh…wait you wanted more? Like a definition of what god is perhaps? Alright.
God as we will use it in the following arguments is a contingent being that is omniscient, Omni benevolent, and omnipotent. However it pays to define these four terms as well.
A Contingent thing is something that exists necessarily.
Omniscience is defined as knowing every true proposition. The reasoning behind this definition is a being knowing that red is green (a false proposition) is nonsensical and pointless. It is easy to argue that there is no reason to believe that God doesn’t know that as well but lets stick with what will keep the professor from grading me down 
.
Omnipotence is defined as being able to bring about any possible state of affairs. For those of you firing off the “God creating something larger than god can lift” this was meant to snuff out your hopes and dreams. Frankly I don’t see how a being can create something from nothing (IE exist in a universe where natural laws don’t exist) and yet cannot do other impossible things in this realm where all things are possible. But again…I have to omit that problem because I’ll see a big D on my final.
Omni benevolence is defined as always preferring what is best for the world. Why such an ambiguous definition? Well when you have 150k children a year (in the US alone I believe) for unknown reasons being still born or having other birth defects that lead to lifelong pain, early death, and terrible things like heart existing outside the infants chest you need to say that its not out of love. Those babies needed those hearts outside their bodies to help them remember they are born sinners. ANYWHO…those are the important definitions.
I apologize in advance because the next part requires me to take the best argument that was given in class to defend Theism. Don’t get me wrong I have heard some wonderful arguments but the following pool of options is terrible. So if you have a better one I’m sure I’ve heard it before and frankly I might even like it (I don’t agree with it but I may like it). So without further adieu here is the best argument for Theism from our class.
The Traditional Cosmological Argument
(1) Many contingent things exist.
(2) Every contingent thing has a cause.
(3) if (1) and (2), then there was a necessary first cause.
(4) If there was a necessary first cause, then there is a God.
— — — — — — —
(5) There is a God.
Indeed there are many contingent things existing in our universe. It is the nature of contingency that gives us the balanced chaos that surrounds us. For everything that is contingent, that means that there must be something that happened to cause that thing to exist, thusly every contingent thing has a cause. If the first two tenants are true then it seems apparent that there must be a first cause. If there was a first cause it must have been god.
Now I’m not sure if this is a valid statement. I do not see how the first three lines lead definitively to a god in the fourth. Because of this I personally will say that it is invalid. Unfortunately this is a problem with all the arguments that I had available. They essentially say something like “Plastic is used in some bags, if this is true then there are planets made of marshmallows.” I do not see how the first observation leads to the second assumption.
I would further query as to why it is acceptable for God to be an uncaused cause and yet in that same breath say the universe cannot be. Likewise if nothing can be an uncaused cause what caused God to exist? We tend to look for causes for all physical things and yet nobody asks what the reasoning behind the lord (or any god) existing is in the first place. Why would some thinking being just exist? It seems reasonable to assume that a stone can exist, all it does is exist. Yet for an organism to exist in all known cases means it has a purpose, the most universal of purposes being to extend its genetic code for as long as possible. What is any God’s reasoning for existing? Is it reproducing? If not why exist at all? An eternity without any real non manufactured purpose seems exceptionally upsetting. Might explain the previously mentioned birth defects however (just a very bitter individual maybe).
The next and final piece to this long winded post is the best argument we were given for atheism. I in no way picked a poor argument above and then took the best argument below just to make theist look like fools, it was sort of forced upon me. Had I had the option I would have taken some amazing argument for Theism, unfortunately in my course it was entirely absent and I apologize to anyone feeling short changed.
To begin the final piece you need a short definition.
Principle for Ontological Parsimony: It is irrational to believe in the existence of anything unless the overall evidence supports your claim.
For those keeping count this is essentially the previous point about propositions, it is literally and definitively insane to believing in a false proposition as true.
The Argument from Ontological Parsimony
(1) There is no good empirical evidence for the existence of God.
(2) There is no a priori evidence for the existence of God.
(3) If (1) and (2), it is irrational to believe in the existence of God.
— — — — — — —
(4) It is irrational to believe in God.
The support for tenant one comes from the fact that there is no repeatable test that can provide evidence for the existence of God. Likewise with tenant two there is no a priori evidence for the existence and as time moves on and technology advances to give people a better perspective of the world and surrounding universe the previously considered a priori evidence “Like our existence at the center of the universe and other false beliefs.” is devolving and vanishing. Finally the support for tenant three is that if you are believing in anything that the overall evidence does not support you are doing so irrationally.
It is important to note that this does not state that God exists or does not Exist, it merely states that believing in the existence of a being that there is no physical evidence supporting the existence of is irrational. Indeed all evidence that is physical is contradicted by other equally supported evidence (such as various religious texts) and all physical events that are used to support the evidence fall apart under scrutiny (such as the flood). The latter being explained by the fact that in early civilizations people lived near areas that were prone to having large floods and that if you had no access to cars or horses it would indeed appear that the entire world had flooded.
A good thought experiment is to look at the events in New Orleans and imagine how the native Americans would have explained it had they been in the center watching everything in all directions getting submerged beneath a massive wall of water. Or anyone who is victim to a large tsunami watching their friends, family, and some of the unfortunately contained livestock being consumed by a massive wave of water. Of course it appears the world has flooded.
So that’s it. I believe I’ve hit every topic that needs to be hit for the exam. Here is to hoping that this time around I don’t get a C. For those that noticed some inconsistencies with the Vera and Kid Patriot in my previous posts I will clarify.
Vera was supposed to simply be the volition of killing the president.
Kid Patriot was supposed to be the desire to kill the president.
Ernest was supposed to be the unfortunate victim of random events that lead to killing the president.
I hope that helps.
Metaphysics Finale (Part 3 of 4)
Mar 7th
Over the next day or two I will be discussing the following topics (Update: Obviously its been more than a few days but I didn’t forget):
Formulating and Explaining: Determinism, Hard Determinism, Soft Determinism, Indeterminism, Volitional Indeterminism, The Theory of Agency, Fatalism, Theism, and Atheism.
Presenting, Explaining, and Evaluating: An Argument Against Moral Responsibility, The Kid Patriot Argument Against Soft Determinism, The Ernest Patriot Argument Against Simple Indeterminism, The Vera Patriot Argument Against Volitional Indeterminism, What I take to be the best argument against The Theory of Agency, The Argument for Fatalism, What I take to be the best argument for Theism, and What I take to be the best argument for Atheism.
Bolded parts can be found here. The Bolded AND Italicized parts can be found here.This may be a few days worth of material so I’ll continue to bold things and perhaps color them so its easy to find the parts relevant to visitors. I also realize that some of this has been stated before, but I will try to give new (I know fantastic) responses to them. Keeping in mind any story about Patriots is fabricated by my professors, I’m just trying to re-iterate them here to make sure I remember them 
.
Lets start with a story about Ernest Patriot, the cousin of Kid Patriot. Earnest Patriot wanted to be a secret service agent his whole life, not unlike Kid Patriot. Essentially all things between the stories are the same except no aliens come and screw around with Earnest Patriots brain. While protecting the president Earnest Patriot notices a piece of lint on his outfit. “Holy snipe!” He thinks and he decides he will dust it off. However, for reasons unknown, he pulls his gun and unloads a shell into the president. Immediately he panics unsure of why the hell it had just happened, perhaps a complex seizure…nobody will ever know because the other agents unloaded on the poor Earnest and dropped him within seconds.
The reason for this story has to do with a philosophy known as Simple Indeterminism which anyone who frequents my site has heard of before.
Simple Indeterminism
1) There are some undetermined actions.
2) People act freely whenever they perform undetermined actions.
3) People are morally responsible for their own undetermined actions.
I’d clarify this but for those curious you can read here. As for Ernest, his actions were indeed undetermined. In fact there was likely far less than a single percent change that what he did would have happened. However it did happen. But this action that was undetermined does not indeed feel like a free action and it most certainly is not fair to assume that someone should be morally responsible for such a deed. Unless we are to start punishing all seizure victims who are placed in a situation where they harm someone else unintentionally. The best I can come up with is that Earnest is morally responsible for placing himself in a position with the president after a previous family member had killed a president. But we’ll see a recurring theme with the patriots that stretch far beyond this second member.
For those who are interested the argument would look like this:
The Ernest Patriot Argument against Simple Indeterminism
(1) If Simple Indeterminism were true, Ernest patriot would be morally responsible.
(2) Ernest was not responsible.
—–
(3) Simple Indeterminism is False.
The justification for the above argument is outlined in the previous paragraphs (I hate redundancy but am generally caught being redundant).
The next magic word to be conjoined with Indeterminism is known as “Volition”.
Volition: The act of choosing, willing, or deciding to do something.
Pretty straightforward. So lets see how this applies to the idea of Volitional Indeterminism:
Volitional Indeterminism
(1) There are some undetermined volitions.
(2) People act freely when they act under undetermined volitions or else actions caused by their own undetermined volitions.
(3) People are morally responsible for their own undetermined volitions and actions caused by their own undetermined volitions.
As we always do lets begin with the reasoning behind the lines. Working from the theory of indeterminism not all actions are predetermined. These periods of freedom allow the person to make their own choice, IE an act of volition. That covers line one, moving on to line two it is relatively easy to see that when you are acting of your own choosing that you are acting freely. Finally if you are acting freely than it seems fair that you would be morally responsible for actions done under the realm of freedom. At first glance this does seem pretty obvious, but lets take another dab into the family of the patriots.
The following is the story of the cousin of Kid Patriot AND Daughter of Earnest Patriot, known to all since birth as Vera Patriot. Once again those damn dirty apes are back…er…martians. They’ve come and placed a chip in Vera much like Kid, this particular chip is not unlike Kids and what it does it makes you REALLY want to do something. It’s that kind of urge that causes people to do really stupid things that they regret greatly later. The story pans out much the same and she becomes the presidents secret service agent. The aliens slap the machine to “super-ultra-mega 99.99999999999999999999998%-mega-death-kill.” indeed she gets this nearly overwhelming urge and blasts the president. They turn off the machine and she is mortified but much like her two siblings she is dropped hard. (Again disclaimer these aren’t my stories).
The Vera Patriot Argument against Volitional Indeterminism
(1) If Volitional Indeterminism were true then Vera Patriot would be morally responsible.
(2) Vera Patriot is not Morally Responsible.
—
(3) Volitional Indeterminism is False
The justification for line one is that it was not a 100% chance and thusly it was an act of volitional indeterminism. The justification for line two is that Vera was a victim of the aliens and not morally responsible. I know…not the worlds most thrilling stuff. But thankfully you only have to see one more argument with a Patriot in it…tomorrow. After that we move on to more interesting stuff. (Lord knows I’ll mix this all up on the exam day since its pretty nonsensical).