iamaelephant

1. SHOULD WE KILL HEALTHY PEOPLE FOR THEIR ORGANS?

Suppose Bill is a healthy man without family or loved ones. Would it be ok painlessly to kill him if his organs would save five people, one of whom needs a heart, another a kidney, and so on? If not, why not?

Consider another case: you and six others are kidnapped, and the kidnapper somehow persuades you that if you shoot dead one of the other hostages, he will set the remaining five free, whereas if you do not, he will shoot all six. (Either way, he'll release you.)

If in this case you should kill one to save five, why not in the previous, organs case? If in this case too you have qualms, consider yet another: you're in the cab of a runaway tram and see five people tied to the track ahead. You have the option of sending the tram on to the track forking off to the left, on which only one person is tied. Surely you should send the tram left, killing one to save five.

But then why not kill Bill?

2. ARE YOU THE SAME PERSON WHO STARTED READING THIS ARTICLE?

Consider a photo of someone you think is you eight years ago. What makes that person you? You might say he she was composed of the same cells as you now. But most of your cells are replaced every seven years. You might instead say you're an organism, a particular human being, and that organisms can survive cell replacement - this oak being the same tree as the sapling I planted last year.

But are you really an entire human being? If surgeons swapped George Bush's brain for yours, surely the Bush look-alike, recovering from the operation in the White House, would be you. Hence it is tempting to say that you are a human brain, not a human being.

But why the brain and not the spleen? Presumably because the brain supports your mental states, eg your hopes, fears, beliefs, values, and memories. But then it looks like it's actually those mental states that count, not the brain supporting them. So the view is that even if the surgeons didn't implant your brain in Bush's skull, but merely scanned it, wiped it, and then imprinted its states on to Bush's pre-wiped brain, the Bush look-alike recovering in the White House would again be you.

But the view faces a problem: what if surgeons imprinted your mental states on two pre-wiped brains: George Bush's and Gordon Brown's? Would you be in the White House or in Downing Street? There's nothing on which to base a sensible choice. Yet one person cannot be in two places at once.

In the end, then, no attempt to make sense of your continued existence over time works. You are not the person who started reading this article.

3. IS THAT REALLY A COMPUTER SCREEN IN FRONT OF YOU?

What reason do you have to believe there's a computer screen in front of you? Presumably that you see it, or seem to. But our senses occasionally mislead us. A straight stick half-submerged in water sometimes look bent; two equally long lines sometimes look different lengths.
Muller-Lyer illusion
Are things always as they seem? The Muller-Lyer illusion indicates not

But this, you might reply, doesn't show that the senses cannot provide good reasons for beliefs about the world. By analogy, even an imperfect barometer can give you good reason to believe it's about to rain.

Before relying on the barometer, after all, you might independently check it by going outside to see whether it tends to rain when the barometer indicates that it will. You establish that the barometer is right 99% of the time. After that, surely, its readings can be good reasons to believe it will rain.

Perhaps so, but the analogy fails. For you cannot independently check your senses. You cannot jump outside of the experiences they provide to check they're generally reliable. So your senses give you no reason at all to believe that there is a computer screen in front of you."

4. DID YOU REALLY CHOOSE TO READ THIS ARTICLE?

Suppose that Fred existed shortly after the Big Bang. He had unlimited intelligence and memory, and knew all the scientific laws governing the universe and all the properties of every particle that then existed. Thus equipped, billions of years ago, he could have worked out that, eventually, planet Earth would come to exist, that you would too, and that right now you would be reading this article.

After all, even back then he could have worked out all the facts about the location and state of every particle that now exists.

And once those facts are fixed, so is the fact that you are now reading this article. No one's denying you chose to read this. But your choice had causes (certain events in your brain, for example), which in turn had causes, and so on right back to the Big Bang. So your reading this was predictable by Fred long before you existed. Once you came along, it was already far too late for you to do anything about it.

Now, of course, Fred didn't really exist, so he didn't really predict your every move. But the point is: he could have. You might object that modern physics tells us that there is a certain amount of fundamental randomness in the universe, and that this would have upset Fred's predictions. But is this reassuring? Notice that, in ordinary life, it is precisely when people act unpredictably that we sometimes question whether they have acted freely and responsibly. So freewill begins to look incompatible both with causal determination and with randomness. None of us, then, ever do anything freely and responsibly."

IN CONCLUSION

Let me be clear: the point is absolutely not that you or I must bite these bullets. Some philosophers have a taste for bullets; but few would accept all the conclusions above and many would accept none. But the point, when you reject a conclusion, is to diagnose where the argument for it goes wrong.

Doing this in philosophy goes hand-in-hand with the constructive side of our subject, with providing sane, rigorous, and illuminating accounts of central aspects of our existence: freewill, morality, justice, beauty, consciousness, knowledge, truth, meaning, and so on.

Rarely does this allow us to put everything back where we found it. There are some surprises, some bullets that have to be bitten; sometimes it's a matter simply of deciding which. But even when our commonsense conceptions survive more or less intact, understanding is deepened. As TS Eliot once wrote:

"…the end of our exploring,

Will be to arrive where we started,

And know the place for the first time."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7739493.stm

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My domain names are up for renewal and I will not be re-purchasing iamaelephant.com
If you have been using this address to visit the website, change your bookmarks to iamaelephant.net

Previously both of these addresses have worked but by next week the .com address will lapse and the website will not be accessible that way. Remember, .net will work, .com will not.

Asteroids made by Neave Games

Hamish

Martin

Bonus pic

OK time to get creative folks, for my last term of study my major assignment has been to do a full business report, it required us to come up with a new product and create a full report and strategy for the implementation and successful running of the business. Anyway my idea is to start scenic flights around Queenstown using microlight trikes (see picture).
the concept is new for Queenstown and the more i look into it the more it seems to be a very viable little business, im seriously looking at trying to start it up once im done with school.
So what i need from you guys is a name and slogans for the business , at the moment Mike's Microlights is about as good as ive got and well that speaks for its self! so yea go crazy and post any ideas you might have.
I also need a logo if anyone is feeling bored and creative, it needs to incorporate some basic shape of the microlight and have a base color of fluro green as that is the color scheme that im using to identify the business.

any input would be great and if its something i can use i will buy you a drink next time i see you

Cheers guys

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I thought I would just post some pics of the weekend

Was only a 5000ft jump unfortunately this time as there were a couple of first time jumpers on this trip....but definitely not complaining!

Sorry Mike I couldn't get you on board! Will do my best next time!

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It seems that quite a few of us are having a number of exams and/or completing degrees at the moment and I was just curious as to what everyone is exactly studying/completing?

I Have just finished my Science degree in Marine Biology and Environmental Science.

Martin - Physics/Computer Science/Programming/Astronomy?
Michelle - Science/Sport and Rec?
Chris A - Business/Law/Economics/Management?
Mike - Science/Outdoor Rec/Tourism?

These are all just stabs in the dark and probably completely wrong lol

I remember reading this little maths riddle last year and it just popped into my head for some reason What went wrong? There is no trickery going on here, this is basic high school algebra which you may or may not remember.

Let a = b
a² = ab
a² - b² = ab - b²
(a + b)(a - b) = b(a - b)
(a + b) = b
a + a = b
2a = a
2 = 1

Hey guys!!

Im having a few people over on 22nd November to celebrate my birthday. Thought we could chill out in the afternoon by the pool, bring along some meat for the bbq with drinking and shenanigans to follow - can any of you make it? Be good to see you all!! From 3pm onwards Let me know if you can make it!

Ohk Guys now that the important election is over and done with, we're left deciding who will control our little island.
I am currently sitting on the fence, I really have no idea, so I thought who better to help me out than the most opinionated people I know, you guys.
So help me out now. I have a task.
I want someone in the Labour camp to write me some pros for Labour and cons for National, consequently if someone from the National camp to do the same, hopefully that'll give me enough to work with. And it saves me doing my own research.
Ok Go, and also if you can keep your answers to 5 or 6 bullet points for and against that'd be super-sweet.

Brad