A Case Against Lie-Detection

This post will, in all likelihood, be very brief and to the point. It isn't so much that I've grown weary of my often overly-verbose descriptions of the simplest phenomena. Rather, this topic is so self-explanatory and the conclusions so self-evident that (I would hope) no further discussion will be warranted.

As you may have easily noticed, there is a rather cliche' image above of an individual hooked up to a polygraph machine. I will spend the next x-amount of sentences decrying the use of these contraptions. Let's get this show on the road:

1) Allow me to first direct your attention toward one of the components seen in the picture with which I am quite familiar: the "Galvanometers." These are electrodes situated on the undersides of the fingers, and measure Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), otherwise known as Skin Conductance Response (SCR). I'll use the latter term. Here's the thing about SCR: if you tell a blatant lie, you're aware that you're lying, and realize that the truth could get you in trouble, you will probably show an observable response. Know what else could cause such a response? Being on trial for murder and knowing that your answer to each question and the readings accompanying them may determine whether you're killed or acquitted. The truth of the matter is that there are many, many things that can produce what appears to be a skin conductance response, including but not limited to deep breaths and thinking about the person in front of you naked. These are difficult enough to tease out when in response to a discrete event in a tightly controlled experiment.

2) Next, I'll simply lump blood pressure, respiration (pneumography), and heart-rate into the same category since my criticisms can by and large be levied in conjunction. Quite like SCR, these measures are, without proper context, rather nonspecific. These, however, suffer even more from such ambiguity. There's always a difficulty in making meaningful comparisons within this sort of transient activity without establishing a proper baseline, which I would be willing to bet many polygraph operators don't bother to do. What you're left with is an array of autonomic responses that, again, are probably highly influenced by the fact that these people have been accused of something like murder, and may potentially be put on death row. To ask them to stay calm for good readings would be like asking a hungry polar bear not to eat you so you can see who wins the World Cup. When faced with a moment or time frame that may determine life or death, you effectively have no baseline, and your readings are inherently biased. Particularly because the responses in question (including SCR) are tightly coupled with nonspecific stress. An additional concern in using this method to investigate homicides is that many sociopaths have been shown to have weaker or relatively nonexistent autonomic responses. What does this mean? Well, in a lot of cases, it means that you may only be capable of catching murder suspects lying who didn't actually commit the murder.

3) Here's the main event. Ready for it? Here it is. Ever heard of the "black box" problem? If so, you've probably already got the idea. If not, allow me to briefly explain. Most polygraph tests simultaneously record three or four different measures within the same physical object. Not three or four distinct pieces of hardware with three or four distinct methods of amplifying and cleaning up the signal: the same piece of hardware. These three or four signals go into one machine that assigns parameters to each measurement, and spits them out. You may ask yourself why this is a problem if each parameter is assigned a distinct waveform area on the paper/computer/etc...well, here's the problem. The "black box" concept refers to the idea that data are being thrown into a program or machine that manipulates the data in set ways and spits it back out in a way that is defined as more easy to interpret or compare. However, without adequate knowledge of what's going on inside the program or machine (the "black box"), you're really not aware of where the numbers or waveforms are coming from. That is, if you don't know how the input becomes the output, how can you know that the transformation was accurate? The machine could easily malfunction, and since all of the readings may be affected, you would probably never know. This problem is only worsened when all of the readings are combined into a single waveform, which is a shit idea for the aforementioned reason, and furthermore because something like SCR and blood pressure are only loosely related and totally incompatable within the same frame of measurement. This may be somewhat less problematic if the operators/analysts of polygraph equpment had an extensive theoretical and technical knowledge of the measurements and algorithms involved, but I would be willing to bet that this very often isn't the case.

Thanks for reading.

Now, where were we...

I've enjoyed an extended hiatus from blogging for quite some time now because I've had better things to do with my time.

Alright, alright...that was only a joke.

Kind of.

But really, the entire mileu of blogging has taken on a sort of negative connotation with which I happen to agree, for better or for worse. It's one of the many embodiments of what manages to be at the same time both endlessly exasperating and simply tragic about my generation: we expect that our particular views or opinions are somehow special, and that everyone in the civilized world is entitled (nay, privileged!) to read them. To "blog" is to willingly participate in this self-indulgent spiral of cultural or intellectual musings that are, at the end of the day, masturbatory. Very few of us are paid or reimbursed in any way for this time spent, and very few of us are ever bettered for having read any particular blog entry. So why do it? Again, the answer is simple. Masturbation - of the ego, that is. Everyone loves a little nudge in the direction of "I'm important," and if they claim otherwise, they're more than likely lying to you, themselves, or both.

Perhaps this raises the question of why I'm writing this right now, and rightfully so. If you're expecting an Atticus Finch-esque exculpation, I'm sorry to disappoint you - I'm a child of the "me" generation, probably like yourself, and I'll have mine.


With that said, this is what I've been up to lately:
School and work, which are no longer separate entities. I am plunging headlong into the world of professional research, and for some sick reason, I couldn't be happier. I suppose I'm on my way to becoming a neuroscientist, and with any luck, I will soon be accepted into a decent graduate program and on my way to earning a PhD. This field excited me as a natural result of my fascination with consciousness and mental events, which is, I'm told, not an uncommon occurrence among students of philosophy. However, I seem to have taken a bit more of a proactive approach: I've all but abandoned philosophy in any professional regard. I have done this for two important reasons: 1) modern "philosophers" seem far more interested in winning intellectual pissing contests than in actually making progress in any field, much less their own, and 2) philosophy itself has been absorbed into its related fields to the extent that one is largely better off in simply studying one of those related fields. For example, modern physics has become theoretical to the extent that it is often indistinguishable from metaphysics (save for ridiculous theories about enormous boats being from another dimension, etc.), and modern neuroscience is coming to merge with epistemology such that studying epistemology alone is now ironically philosophically limiting. Neuroscience is at an extremely important position in the history of our species. We are quite literally on the brink, every single day, of discovering some feature of the brain that gives rise to a particular behavior or cognitive state. These things separately may mean little, though taken together, complex behaviors and cognitive states may be explained. So on, so forth until the level of complexity that we understand approaches that of reality.

Given many a mental wrestle and discussion I have had regarding the mind-brain relationship, it may strike those who know me as odd that I am so fervently interested in the ability of neural activity to produce behaviors. Have I resigned to the notion that the brain is the mind? Well...yes, and no. It is, at this point, quite ignorant (or at the very best, unfounded) to hold that the mind is independent of the brain. On the other hand, it's quite clear to me and to many researchers that there is no such one-to-one relationship to be found. The brain's sheer power as a machine and storage device is such that such a relationship is not physically possible or even conceptually plausible. The mind, then, is not to be found in the brain, but is an emergent property of it, of some sort. This relationship may never be wholly understood. But even so, we're getting close enough to be excited.

More More Morals!

Ethics is a messy territory, and I ordinarily do not enjoy discussing it. I have my reasons, and most of them revolve around the apparent fact that argument really doesn't get us very far, if anywhere. Some of us are more firm in our opinions than others, but morality seems to be one of those particularly difficult areas. Have you ever tried to convince someone that their idea of what is the 'right thing to do' is, in fact, wrong? You'll usually get either people who find it difficult to abandon their own perspective, or people who are too eager to do so. You don't meet too many of us who are only sort of morally opinionated.

I myself am something of a difficult case (to myself, at least). I would very much like to tell you that I have solid moral opinions, but my immediate thoughts and reactions to ethical matters lead me to believe that I am far more relativistic (relativism, in case anyone isn't familiar with it, is the view that there is no absolute truth to morality...i.e., it's relative). This isn't to say that I don't find it appalling when someone rapes or murders another person, or abuses an animal - I very much do. I am, however, uncomfortable with making the claim that anything I could, in a given situation, consider to be 'right' or 'wrong' will hold true in every such case.

Immanuel Kant would disagree with my last sentiment quite adamantly. Kant is one of the thinkers for whom I have an immeasurable amount of respect, and someone whose work I think everyone should expose themselves to at least once (if for no better reason, to appreciate his genius - and I don't make light of that word). He's famous for his work in many areas of philosophy, but most people arguably know him for his ethical stance. He came up with a refined version of the 'Golden Rule,' which he calls the Categorical Imperative. Kant is unfortunately notorious for coining obscure, cryptic phrases to express a pretty simple idea, so fear not...the Categorical Imperative isn't complicated. Basically, it means that everyone should behave such that they would want every one of their actions to become universal law. In other words, if you do X in Y situation, you believe so strongly that this was the correct action that you think everyone should do X in Y situation. This certainly seems to be a failsafe against knowing the right thing to do and apathetically choosing a lesser action, and I find it to be beautiful in its optimism. But optimism it has, and maybe a little too much. It seems a little too demanding, doesn't it? For one very selfish reason, it basically excludes any of the fun, irresponsible behaviors in which we're all so fond of indulging. It also asks a little too much of us in terms of rationality. Few of us rationally decide to say something cruel to a friend when angry with them - we do these things because, overcome with emotion, we are unable to reason through to the consequences, and act accordingly.

An important point to make about Kant's view is that it's a rule-based ethics. We're familiar with rules, and barring obvious conflicts amongst them, they're usually pretty easy to understand. But that's a very important trouble - rules can, in some cases, conflict with one another (for example, referencing traffic laws, if you're parked just in front of a no-turns red light and an ambulance needs by, you of course roll through and get out of the way, as you're obligated to do...but in doing so, you broke a different law). Moreover rules don't necessarily provide us with all the answers - indeed, how could they? They're broad and general, and only apply to so many specific situations. This argument is posed quite eloquently by Aristotle, whose own view (along with many of the Greeks) was such that one's moral constitution is determined not through adherence to a rule-based ethics, but through his/her actions in particular situations. In other words, the judgments you make and the subsequent actions you decide upon determine your moral quality. If you see fit to break a generally accepted rule, and do so for a reason good enough to abandon the rule, you're in good (if not better) shape.

Then, of course, we have the relativists. These come in all shapes and sizes, but one of the more popular among them has got to be Nietzsche. Nietzsche is, however, fairly misunderstood. Many take his statements at face-value and never really read any of his writings, which are pretty straightforward and yet far more complex than one might be inclined to assume. Yes, Nietzsche was a nihilist. No, Nietzsche was no fan of religion. No, Nietzsche did not believe that there was any objective truth to morality. This does not, however, mean that he had no use for moral notions. Quite the contrary, Nietzsche had a sort of hedonistic stance. He felt, to a large extent, that one should do one's very best at satisfying his or her personal needs - if at the expense of others, it's of little consequence. This is, however, Nietzsche's own opinion, which he makes quite clear. It's not so much a 'this is the truth' so much as a presentation of his take on the matter, and he couldn't have cared less whether you took it or left it. Nietzsche, like Aristotle, didn't care for adherence to a rule-based ethics, but he takes it a step further. Whereas Aristotle felt that one could achieve moral greatness, Nietzsche, as far as my understanding goes, had no use for such a concept. The only greatness, to Nietzsche, was greatness of the sort expressed by power and influence. Morals, of course, can get in the way of such things, which is largely why Nietzsche spent such a great deal of time and energy denouncing them.

For the sake of brevity, I've outlined only three views I find to be pretty big in the history of philosophy - though these views very much apply in modernity, I think. Additionally, I was, as most discussions of philosophers using less than a book's worth of material tend to be, extremely oversimplified. Hopefully, it made for an interesting discussion, though. I highly recommend reading any of these people mentioned, though certainly Kant and Nietzsche are more entertaining writers than Aristotle.

The take-home point? I have no idea. As I said, I'm no fan of discussing morality in any ambitious sense. We all have at least a general idea of what we tend to think of a given situation, but producing your own moral theory is no ea

Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe.

Scientifique

Science is, to a large extent, tragically misunderstood. The misunderstanding, however, isn't crucial or crippling in its nature or scope - it's merely conceptual, as I see it - but a conceptual confusion is often indicative of and capable of producing some more fundamental difficulties. It's certainly not my particular area of expertise to explain to anyone what overhanging theories dominate the playing field of, say, chemical theory today, but I think people fail to understand certain goals, methods, and applications of scientific research. I'm going to try, in my hopelessly ill-informed state, to explain what I mean, why this is a problem, and how we can fix it.

First and foremost, a scientific theory is descriptive in nature rather than prescriptive. While this seems obvious if seriously considered, I feel that it's often not seriously considered. When asked to explain why a certain scientific theory (or, if well established enough, law) - let's say gravity - is true, many will appeal to the person who discovered, formulated, and applied it. But why did this person cook up this theory? What question was he or she trying to answer? In Newton's case, he reasoned that something must be drawing objects toward the ground, and was dissatisfied with Aristotle's conception (which held that, in a nutshell, things composed of earth were drawn to the earth - ridiculous to us, yes, but this was the best available explanation at the time).
What's important to note here is that Newton did not really discover anything - rather, he described something. The law of gravity was not floating around in space waiting for someone to grab onto it - it was created by a man toward the end of describing an observable phenomenon. This is not, of course, to discredit Newton. Contrarily, I find it more impressive that someone could formulate such a theory rather than pick it off of some idea tree. People are sometimes a bit jolted by this idea, but it really isn't too strange to us. When we're children, we explain things in ways that we now find silly in light of our newer, better explanations. However, our newer explanations aren't necessarily the right ones (truthfully, nothing we postulate is likely totally true - we have cognitive limits, i.e., we can only grasp so much about a given thing at a given moment). The bottom line is that this description rather than discovery concept is the way it happens. Euclidean Geometry stood for a very, very long time, and it's what we still use in our day-to-day dealings with length, angles, and other such measurements. But we've found out relatively recently that Euclidean Geometry just isn't true in all cases. If you find this little tidbit interesting, I highly recommend reading up on it...very cool stuff.

Second, science does not prove things, but seeks to disprove. The fact that it often does more or less prove a theorem to be the case (to our knowledge) is highly convenient icing on the cake. Anyone familiar with experimental procedure past high school science class can tell you that the vast majority of serious experiments are set up such that you are not explicitly setting out to prove an experimental hypothesis, but to disprove a null hypothesis. In other words, your null hypothesis states that there is no significant finding in your data, and you are trying to prove that wrong. This may seem like a nit-picky thing to discuss, but it is very, very important if conceived of in full scope.
Take medicine for example. We've grown accustomed to this deterministic view of the practice of medicine in a way that, when we get sick, we want to go see a doctor, and we're quite sure that she will know exactly what we have, and exactly what to give us to treat it. And if she doesn't know exactly what to do...well...we get a bit flabbergasted, and maybe a little upset. But why? The answer, I think, is that we have this implicit expectation of science - this misunderstanding I'm talking about. We fail to realize that any sort of science attempts to rule out alternative explanations in choosing the best one - once the best answer to a given question or set of questions is found, it can be kept ready for when those sorts of questions arise. But it isn't always that easy; especially in medicine. Doctors don't run dozens of tests on people for fun. Moreover, how many times have you had several tests over the course of an hour or two, finally resulting in the doctor giving you an antibiotic because your "white blood cell count is high," or something like that? This often means you have some sort of infection, and they don't know what, so they gave you the Swiss Army Knife of drugs in hopes of it doing something (and kudos to antibiotics...they really do work wonders).

Finally, we need to understand that science carries with it an array of assumptions. I'll be as brief as possible here, because I could go on for pages, but it's worth mentioning. For one, it assumes there are truths in the world of experience to be found, and that we can come to understand them. It also assumes that the scientific method (observe, experiment, report) is the best way to go about this. This is, in no way, me railing against the scientific enterprise or the medical community (though I occasionally do, for very different reasons). I'm instead frustrated with people who expect researchers and doctors to have all the answers. In terms of whittling down all the available information in all the possible causal relationships in this world, we are a very long way from having even a big chunk of the answers. Science is a tool of discovery, but it's more accurate to think of it as a magnifying glass than some all-encompassing database. We often find new information and have to change our conception of the world around us, and even sometimes our most fundamental assumptions. This should not be discouraging, in my opinion, and is the main reason I feel that scientific inquiry is truly distinguished from, say, intuitive learning. The point of science is to revise itself when mistaken - and you can rest assured that it is mistaken quite often.

Brain/Mind.

There have been more theories of the way the mind operates than one can go through in a timely manner - I certainly won't be going there right now. However, as touched upon in my previous post, reductionist materialism is enjoying a lot of support these days, and I certainly can't claim that it isn't for quite arguable reasons. With that having been said, however, I can't really bring myself to be alright with the two entities of 'brain' and 'mind' being thrown about as though they were interchangeable. This isn't something you only encounter under heavy deliberation - in fact, I'm currently taking a course titled "Brain, Mind, and Behavior" which (while the instructor may not be nearly as dogmatic) features a textbook that takes this concept completely as given. Why might this be done, and what problems are there with this view?

It's obvious that the brain and one's mental state are intertwined to such a degree that one seems to imply the other (note use of the term imply, in that they are related and not mutually referential). The brain regulates every activity of the body in some form or fashion, and is clearly capable of influencing cognition and behavior. Speaking empirically, a person may be so affected if any other organ in the body is manipulated or removed, but the brain is currently understood to an extent that one can produce reliably expected outcomes. For example, we have clearly identified sensory pathways within the brain, and we have identified regions of the brain which control and respond to motor functions - any structural abnormalities which may occur in these regions will produce dysfunctions of which, given the precise location, we can predict and explain with reasonable accuracy. Moreover, the prefrontal cortex is thought to house emotional and normative faculties, and a great deal of evidence supports this idea (this is often used to explain why young children, with the aforementioned brain region being underdeveloped, throw temper tantrums and very seldom make any value judgments).

Here, however, lies the trouble. These things prove that the brain provides a foundation upon which the mind can operate, but they do not deterministically prove that the brain and the mind are different names for the same thing, nor do they prove that the mind is to be found within it. This view is pushed all-too-enthusiastically by Thomas Szasz, a philosopher whose work I am currently being graded to evaluate, who actually holds that the term 'mind' refers to nothing biological or even physical, but rather to an attribution - an imaginary entity created upon which to base our moral judgments. Indeed, the terms 'mind' and 'brain' do seem intuitively to belong to two entirely different groups of ideas, and I believe that Szasz is correct in attributing the former to normative (value-laden) conversation and the latter to positive (matter-of-fact) conversation. His weaker arguments nonwithstanding (and believe me, there are plenty of them), he raises an important question of our fundamental understanding of 'mind'. Does it exist independently of our willingness to attribute our thought processes to it? Do we have minds, or do we simply mind things; in other words, do we have a particular thought-bank which ultimately comprises our personality, or do we merely think from one moment to the next (mind you, this doesn't exclude disposition of temperament, which no one is in any positino to deny - rather, it expresses the possibility that 'mind' just refers to our collection of thoughts, which Szasz believes to be just that and nothing more).

This is interesting, to me, from an evolutionary standpoint. As all higher life forms on this planet appear to have developed from a number of ancestors, and that 'intelligence' in the form that humans possess has taken some notable leaps in the course of our known (or understood) history, we can perhaps infer that 'mind' itself is an emergent property, and develops like wings or opposable thumbs. Some take the view that animals have no minds to speak of, and others disagree (I certainly do); however, regardless of one's stance here, I doubt many would (or could) reasonably compare the mind of a human being to that of a dog. Would we, then, compare the mind of a modern human to that of his/her 4 million year old ancestor? I highly doubt it - we would likely find what we would think of as 'deficiencies' in nearly every area, from emotional regulation to logical reasoning, though I would wager that they would have a far more developed sensory-orientation and more motor control. What can we take from this? Well, it seems obvious to me that one sporting either type of 'mind' would have certain strenghts and certain weaknesses, comparatively. But this, again, suggests that the mind is not a static thing, but develops as the brain and the habits of the host do (which would quite seemingly shoot down Plato's idea of the mind as eternal, static, and immortal, barring several complications).

But wait a minute...did I just attribute the mind to the physical brain? Yes - kind of. I, personally, am of the opinion that the existence of the mind independent of the brain is an absurd concept, and a hopeful confusion. Many among us certainly (and understandably) find the idea of consciousness after physical death appealing, but there is quite simply no good logical reason to believe this (sorry, Plato). Additionally, if the best one can do in providing a good reason is to appeal to the perfection and eternal being that is the idea of a 'God', suffice it to say I'm not convinced (sorry, Descartes). Mind seems to me locked inside and doomed to croaking alongside the body - but hey, it can have a good time while the candle's burning, right? With all that having been said, is the mind the brain (or is it to be found there)? No - I find this proposition equally as absurd. Why? 'Mind' does not refer to any physical entity or process, and thus equating it to or looking for it within one is a fundamental confusion. Does the mind exist? Yes - I believe it does. One can make the claim that it's simply a name we give to the process of attending to our sensory information from the outside world, and while I find this account to be somewhat appealing in its simplicity, I find it also a bit too simple. Judgment and abstract reasoning elude this hypothesis - love certainly does.

I see myself as, by and large, a fairly logical person. I often dismiss mysticisms on the very basis of their requiring faith, and find structured, sound arguments appealing (though often taken with a grain of salt). However, the 'mind' appears to me to be in a category all its own, sharing characteristics with macrocosmic biological processes such as evolution and with mysterious and inexplicable ones such as spontaneously choosing to reverse maladaptive behaviors. I see the mind as one of the very few 'magical' things left for we humans to experience, and perhaps the single, very last thing that science will never have the opportunity to objectify.

Freedom of the Will: To Has, or Not To Has?

Alright, so maybe this is a bit oversimplified, but it made me giggle.

The thing is, though, that the issue of free will has been, is, and probably will always be just that - an issue. "Free Will" can be defined as "...a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives," though perhaps a more concise, to the point definition can be taken as "freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention." In any event, I'm sure the vast majority of individuals of average circumstance in the developed world have considered this problem at some point and to some degree, and are at least somewhat familiar with it. It is difficult, truly, to discuss this issue at length without (unfortunately) resorting to highly technical terminology, but I will avoid this where possible, and where I don't, I will do my best to explain away potential confusion.

What we should first examine, I think, is the way one's view on this matter may arise and develop. Often, many of one's philosophical opinions arise necessarily from antecedent views - namely, metaphysical or epistemological ones (a metaphysics can be very roughly defined as a theory of reality, and an epistemology as a theory of knowledge...though even a superficial examination will show that one often bleeds into the other). The two most evident cases are the ancient Greeks on the side of our having free will, and most modern metaphysicians on the side of our not having it.

Plato (which I will perhaps erroneously take as representative of a large portion of ancient Greek thought) posited that the will is free as a result of his metaphysical theory of Forms, which holds (crudely put, mind you) that physical reality is governed by and partakes of Forms - pure, idealized, abstract objects exemplifying their properties. The physical world is imperfect, and cannot achieve the perfection of the Forms, but in striving to do so produces the eternal motion of the cosmos - we may think of this as the cycles through which things move and exist, be it life/death or universal expansion/contraction (or entrophy). Mind, or consciousness, is one of these pure substances, and is in fact taken as among the highest and most influential in his metaphysics. In his view, body is enslaved by the manipulative, willing capacities of mind just as the physical world is so controlled by the Forms, though the mind is somewhat blinded and corrupted by the nature of bodily wants/needs/desires, and as such cannot achieve true purity until death. The pursuit of pure knowledge and truth, however, is a choice one can make. To Plato, mind can and will exist separately from the body upon biological death because of its very nature (he has an argument for this, which I'll discuss if anyone happens to be interested). This first bit is actually quite intuitive, I think - for we can easily consider a situation as simple as deciding to move one's arm as apparently evident of this view, and may be quite tempted to interject that one did this because he/she willed it.

A modern metaphysician, however, would contend that Plato's stream of causation is completely the opposite of what is really happening. To such thinkers, consciousness arises directly from the body - the brain - and is simply a survival tool, an emergent property, of it. In the case of one's deciding to move his/her arm, this action was not willed, but necessarily performed as a result of bodily processes: willing it to happen is simply a consequence - an illusion. This view is notably less mystical than the Platonic view - it arises, indeed, from modern science (roughly beginning in the late 17th Century, and going stronger than ever before through modernity). The more information about the universe (and the human body in particular) that we gather, the more things we've come to tend to feel as though we can explain away. This tendency gave rise to materialism - the view that the only thing that exists is matter, nothing more or less, and that all events are a result of material interaction. This metaphysics had obvious epistemological consequences - many have come to hold that consciousness is itself a result of the sequence of biochemical/electrical/structural brain states experienced by a given individual. Remember when you wanted Cap'n Crunch instead of a Pop-Tart this morning? That was influenced by every event through which your body has gone since conception - your conscious mind had nothing at all to do with it. Buying this? The vast majority of modern scientists and philosophers of metaphysics alike do, and it's gotten a lot of reinforcement from ongoing developments in neuroscience. Certainly, the undeniable relationship between tampering with a human brain and producing expected results seems to be pretty clear evidence. The pervasive view, in summation, is that given enough knowledge about the physical world, we can potentially explain any and every event - we just aren't there yet. Is this intuitive, though? Do you feel as though every thought that runs through your head - every decision you make - could simply be body-language translated into the illusion of meaningful consciousness?

I'm not going to offer any solutions. Of that, you can be certain. I shall, however, point out a few implications and issues that arise from either view.

I'll first pick on the 'no free will' side. First and foremost, quantum physics lies in direct opposition with a deterministic view - on a subatomic level, things do appear to have a lack of predictable governance. A strike against this view, for sure, though these very same researchers often turn around and posit determinism once again once you climb high enough up the complexity scale (in other words, things are only nondeterministic at the subatomic level - we still don't have free will). One of the most obvious questions raised against this view is this: if we indeed have no capacity to make free choices, how is it that anyone can ever be responsible for an action? Anyone can see where this is going - where is the room for praise or blame? This has some serious moral consequences (which would drive Kant nuts, as his views on freedom of will arose directly from his ethics)...in this materialistic view, there really is no such thing as 'morality' at all, but rather sets of sociocultural norms which one can follow or not (this is commonly referred to as Moral Relativism, a la Nietzsche). If you agree that there is no such thing as freedom of will, blaming a mass murderer for slaughtering handfuls of people is bare-bones hypocritical. Are any of us really willing to live with this consequence of eliminating personal responsibility? Very few, I'd wager. Indeed, some have tried to reconcile this view with our gut notions of morality, but it hasn't been too successful. Also, on a lighter but just as poignant note, if we are truly hardwired from birth to behave in a certain pattern, why is it that we think in any discernable way at all? Why are we not, for lack of a better term, just machines?

The 'free will' side of things isn't faring much better. First and foremost, there is no logical proof for the existence of free will, and there never will be (I say 'logical proof' because an empirical proof is quite out of the question). The existence of consciousness independent of a body is something that hasn't been and likely can't be proven, either. There have been some compelling arguments made, but none really hold enough water. Furthermore, in light of the sort of work being done with the brain and its obvious tie to things such as memory and particular talents, appealing to the possible array of different particular tastes one might have won't get anyone very far. Many use the word 'mystical' (as I did in describing Plato's view) in reference to arguments for freedom of will, and it's not entirely unwarranted - you can't appeal to empirical data, which is what those interested in knowledge in this day and age want to hear. Most of us probably think that our actions are chosen, but the burden of proof falls naturally on the one making the more unsupported claim, so we're left with very little to work with. In actuality, one can't really make the claim anymore that mind controls body entirely - take a chunk out of my hippocampus and I'll forget I just met you, what I did last night, and so on.

So where does 'god' fit into all this? Anywhere you want to fit one, basically. Considering the problem, it's not difficult to see that either side of the story can work a god concept in. In the case of free will, one can argue that we have it as 'god-given,' though I don't suggest such a silly and weak argument be taken seriously. If one were to explain that free will exists to necessitate the existence of dynamism and variance of character from person to person, however, things get a bit more interesting. After all, we have a capacity to think to ourselves, often quite abstractly and about things that do not pertain to our experience at all...if we were mere programmed machines, what would be the reason for this? This is what people can formulate into a 'god concept,' not in speaking of a Christian sort of god (big bearded man in the sky), but of a principle which gives things the purpose and capacity to differ toward some end (this is called a 'teleology,' from the Greek word 'telos,' translated as 'purpose'). A no-free-will advocate could claim, however, something to the note of the 'watchmaker' theory of god, holding that a first principle set everything in motion according to a particular plan, which will play out exactly as it was meant to regardless of what seems to be the opinions/drives/wants of its components. This could go on and on, but the main thing I meant to be taken from it is that the idea of a god doesn't really pull either side out of the holes they dig.

So what do you think - did you read all of this because you chose to, or was this determined?

Politik

You know, I've never been anything more than suspiciously and reservedly lukewarm toward any politician I favored, though I can't even count the number of political figures who have made my stomach turn. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way, and based on conversations with my fellow citizens, I can fairly confidently project this trend onto much of the nation at large.

Lately, I've been wondering why this is - why we so easily develop an active distaste for a public officer with whose opinions we disagree, but can't bring ourselves to 'like' those with whom we agree. Granted, being only twenty years old, I've been around for a relatively short amount of time in terms of the s0-called political scene...though if you're ready to take that aim, I'll have you recall that the U.S. is itself an infant in the world of global polity. Think about it for a second. Think back to most any political conversation or debate you've heard - be it between professionals or buddies - in as long a period as you can remember: were the talking heads discussing how great their favored individual was, or were they rather bashing the other guy? I'll bet you a dollar against a doughnut that it was the latter of the two. But let's assume someone was in fact speaking solely in favor of their pick. Now, I ask you: were they truly discussing the person in terms of positive qualities, agreements with particular views, and capacity to do good, or were they just doing the sort of 'shameless plugging' that you hear on FOX or CNN (depending on whether you prefer Republicans or Democrats, respectively), notoriously arguing not for the candidate, but for Person A relative to the supposedly inferior Person B?

You can take my perspective or leave it, but I still urge you to ask yourselves this: based on this last presidential election (since it's still pretty fresh in everyone's memories), when you voted for McCain or Obama, did you do this because you truly liked your candidate, or because he was "better than the other guy?"

And make no mistake - there is a very big difference between liking and trusting the candidate and liking a handful things he or she represents or stands for. By this, I refer to a number of voters who throw all favor toward a candidate because of, say, his or her views on abortion or stem cell research. These are big issues, undoubtedly, but not the only ones by any stretch of the imagination (and given the state of the economy, I can't fathom why these sorts of issues would trump something like a candidate's stand on fiscal policy). How many of you voted for McCain because of his and the Republican party's outspoken favor of Christianity? How many against him because of this? How many of you voted for Obama because you felt that the rights of homosexuals would be better supported? How many against him because of this? Put bluntly, how many of you voted the way you did because of one single, solitary factor? The trouble in voting for a single thing your guy stands for is that upholding that thing may not be much of a priority to that person at all. I'll bet for most among us, economic policy and foreign relations - things that can and do affect every single, last one of us - were afterthoughts. Why? Because we are self-centered. Particularly Americans. In the words of John Lennon, "I, me, mine."

It may not be too difficult to see where I'm going with this, but in case it's been altogether ambiguous for those with whom I'm acquainted, I'll lay it out. This two-party system of government is absolute, utter horse shit, and needs to be done away with. It's divisive, old, tried, broken, and corrupt. I and anyone else could spend days on end expounding the differences between modern Republicans and Democrats, but in the end, it all boils down to the same scenario: a complete misunderstanding of principles and the necessary perversion of them that ensues. You go ask anyone favoring either party to tell you why, get a clear, intelligible answer free of B.S. party jargon, and I'll show you a purple, 30-foot leprechaun. Both political entities have their heads so far up their own and each other's asses that they can no longer make intelligent decisions - they're bound by their own dogmas (which, sadly, has largely degenerated to the incredibly immature position of merely opposing what the other group says or does). We need a third party, and I'm hoping against hope that come 2012, we'll have ourselves one.

I suppose all this criticism may lead one to ask just where I stand on these issues. I adamantly refuse to associate myself with a 'party,' but I tend to side with the Democrats a large portion of the time. Why? For one, they aren't quite as arrogant and blatantly rude as Republicans, by and large. For another, I'm nonreligious, and entirely too many policies typical of Republicans revolves around the very specific Christian faith. Here comes the tricky part: ideally...ideally, in a world where right was right, fair was fair, and systems could exist free of big-wig swindlers, I would most certainly side with Republicans and favor a laissez-faire economy. The free market is an excellent tool for managing an economy. Until it crashes. Why does it crash? Any number of reasons, to be sure...but these days, we've got too many snakes in the grass. Too many political heavyweights with their claws in the market. To any who might claim that allowing for the government to 'officially' control the market would be a bad thing - I have a two-part response: 1) for the most part, I agree...BUT 2) wake up and smell the coffee - this has been the case for a good while now. The market isn't free, and it hasn't been for a very long time - it never will be again. For this reason, I support market regulation. Not straight "socialism," mind you (and my, how fond the more ignorant among us have become of throwing that word around), but something closer to a social democracy, a la modern European states. If we assign the government a clear and distinct role in our economy, it will be much, much easier to hold them accountable for it (as opposed to the current situation, where we all know it's going on and attempt to push it out of mind to simply makes us feel better about the whole thing). It's working out pretty well for Europe. And if you think our quality of living here trumps theirs outright, think again. The U.S. media machine would have us think modern Europeans live in envy of us - they don't. And at the end of the day, despite the higher tax rates, most working-class Europeans wind up with more cash-in-hand than most working-class Americans. All this on top of things such as free healthcare and extremely affordable higher education. Don't believe me? Look it up, though I'm sure, as previously mentioned, that this isn't altogether unfamiliar.

The U.S. is all about progression and hurdling toward the future, is it not? Well, guys, the world has been moving on without us for a number of years now. Industrialization was a necessary step for progressing into modernity, but things are different now, and there's little sense in clinging to old guns. Changing times and changing circumstances call for changed policies, and I think it's about time we moved on.