…It is by means of technology that man the person, the subject of qualified and perfectible freedom, becomes quantified, that is, becomes part of a mass—mass man—whose only function is to enter anonymously into the process of production and consumption. He becomes on one side an implement, a “hand,” or better, a “bio-physical link” between machines: on the one side he is a mouth, a digestive system and an anus, something through which pass the products of his technological world… …a closed system of mechanisms with no purpose but that of keeping themselves going.”
-From Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, by Thomas Merton
So, are you… are all people… merely complex machines?
10 comments:
Every machine is built for a purpose. what is ours?
Ah... the existentialists are happy that you're asking that question... essence or existence, which comes first?
"Machine - A device that transmits or modifies energy."
I guess we are then.
But I don't like to think of us as machines in the sense that we normally think of them in...
… yes, it’s hard/uncomfortable to admit, but it’s true: we are mere machines. The only thing that makes us special, and we humans love to think of ourselves as special, is that as machines we make and own other machines.
Aren’t we clever.
So I guess that means that when I have kids someday, my spouse and I will be two machines making other machines. And I guess because we make them, then we own them, which will be handy. We’ll add our kids to the list of appliances that make our lives easier: microwave, dish washer, dryer, vacuum, and “kids” that we call “human” when we’re feeling sentimental.
Makes me wonder why slavery is wrong: isn't slavery just one machine owning another? They are, we are, nothing more than bone levers, heart pumps, tendon pulleys, brain computers, and of course the coursing chemicals that unscientific people/machines give sympathetic 'human' terms to like ‘emotions’ and 'feelings'.
What I was getting at with my amoeba example is that when you start at the bottom, it seems as though the simplest creatures fit the definition of a machine, as determined by us in class.
They supposedly:
• Aren't self-aware
• Can't develop thoughts
• Can't change the way they are (I think it was)j
And it seems as though they were "built" to just carry out a menial task. To take in energy, use some of that energy, and expend the rest of it.
What would the purpose of that be? I don't know, that's not what I'm looking for right now, and we'll save that for another time.
But you'd agree that an amoeba is sort of like a simple machine, right?
Well what if you move to a small multi-cellular organism? Does that all of a sudden not become a machine? Something with a menial task? Something that meets those three requirements?
Then you move up the chain of command. When do you draw the line at what is a machine and what's not a machine? Surely, humans can't be machines, because...we're humans!
Would it be a bug, where free-will is possibly present? Small birds where thoughts might start to occur? Mammals who might start to be self-aware? Apes, who have the closest mental state to a human?
Maybe. But certainly not humans. That's impossible.
Maybe the definition of a machine is simply something that performs a task.
And maybe we've overlooked our task and have given it too much importance.
Maybe we won't know if we've overlooked our task until we learn the "meaning of life," whatever that may be.
But can we not admit that we may be just as equal as the rest of them...just as machine-like as our feral counter-parts?
Why do we live so far away from them?
I think we are just as machine-y as any other being on this world.
Einstein would probably agree, but not by choice. In the April 16th issue of Time, he is quoted as saying:
“I am a determinist. I do not believe in free will. Jews believe in free will. They believe that man shapes his own life. I reject that doctrine.”
…and later…
“I am compelled to act as if free will existed, because if I wish to live in a civilized society I must act responsibly… …I know that philosophically a murderer is not responsible for his crime…”
Can machines be held responsible? I’m sure you’ve heard the cliché, “Gun’s don’t kill people; people kill people.” If Einstein is right, there is no difference. If a person is shot dead, should we punish ALL of those guilty of the murder… the gun, AND the person who pulled the gun’s trigger, AND the other mechanisms that pulled that person’s trigger, AND the causes preceding those causes, AND…”
It seems to me that Einstein views us as very small parts of a larger universal machine, parts that don’t have ANY choice about the functions and roles they play within that larger context. And yet, his second statement above seems to suggest that as non-free humans, we must ‘pretend’ and ‘imagine’ that we ARE free to choose… we are compelled to behave as if we have something we don’t.
I just can’t imagine that… I can’t imagine a machine without free will, imagining that it does.
BTW, here is more about determinism: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/
“Yet pleasure and pain are relative, and the grass on the other side soon feels like the grass on this side. To retain the sensation of getting somewhere we must soon find yet another pasture and another fence over which to cast our envious glances. It is thus that we feel alive only in terms of the sensation of moving from the less to the more—that is to say, by running AROUND faster and faster. The principal reason for this practical madness is that we are not alive at all. We are dead with an immortal, continuing death, which is perhaps what the [Christian] myth means by everlasting, eternally recurring damnation. And we are dead because each man recognizes himself simply and solely as his past. His “I”, his continuity and identity, is nothing but an abstraction from his memory, since what I know of myself is always what I WAS. But this is only tracks and echoes, from which the life has vanished. If the only self which I know is a thing dead and done, a WAS, a “has-been”, and I am ever reluctant to admit that I am dead, my only recourse is to work and struggle to give this “has-been” a semblance of life—to make it continue, move, get somewhere. But because it is dead, and has all the fixity and permanence of an unchangeable fact, this “I” can only go on being what it was. Like a machine, it can only repeat itself AD NAUSEAM, however fast it may run.”
-From Myth and Ritual in Christianity, by Alan. W. Watts. (Note: Italics in the original text were changed to CAPS in the passage quoted above... I've got to learn HTML tags... any help?)
If we are merely complex machines…
… it would seem that mathematics should be able to model and solve ALL of our problems. After all, what do scientists and engineers use when they are trying to model a mechanistic situation, describe a mechanistic phenomenon, solve a mechanistic problem, or design a mechanistic solution? They use math!
Even though I hold a degree in mathematics, I DON’T believe that math can—or ever will be able to—model and solve all that is the human experience.
Perhaps some of you have a faith in math that I do not... a faith that mathematics can model and solve ANYTHING... if so, perhaps you can help me understand what I'm missing...
I think most of it depends on what the context is, and what your definition of machine is.
A device consisting of fixed and moving parts that modifies mechanical energy and transmits it in a more useful form.
If it is this, how can we not be machines?
If you are looking at a machine exclusively in terms of mathematics, then I would say no, humans are not machines. And nor are any other living beings, or any non-living things for that matter, that exist on this earth without us. (A non-living tool we have created would be a machine.)
That is only pertaining to what we know, however. There's a chance that a God has made us all gears in a machine simply for his aesthetic pleasure. There's a chance we've been programmed into a simulator, and we could have no knowledge of what is really going on. There's a chance that a God truly has given us free will, and that humans really are meant to be the rulers of everything we proclaim ourselves as.
But as far as we know, we aren't machines, in terms of mathematics. Most humans will not deny, even the atheists, that humans have a spiritual element to them, or that they at least have free will.
Thoughts that we have free will or spirituality, or, as a matter of fact, that we have any thoughts at all are all purely man made.
However, and as I said in my previous post, we could simply be overlooking our "task." This task could just be to take in and put out energy like all the rest of the creatures on this earth, in order to spread diversity (for what purpose, I do not know.) Our "task" could be anything, but we have given it to much importance, because we want to feel needed. We want to feel special, and important.
We could very possibly be machines, and we could very possibly be not...that.
I think it's one of the things that no being will ever know...unless it comes to us in a dream, or we have some rapture-like awakening to what's really going on.
With locust swarms...and tornadoes of fire...and glowing prophets revealing the truth to us...but until then, we may never really know.
PS: Use (i)asdf(/i) for italics, (b)asdf(/b) for bold, and some other things for other things...
But use < and > instead of parentheses.
Hmmm... good perspectives...
...and thanks for the HTML help :)
Post a Comment