About our discussion of whether one can come back from the dead. Death as process:
Death in this context is now seen as less an event than a process: conditions once considered indicative of death are now reversible. Where in the process a dividing line is drawn between life and death depends on factors beyond the presence or absence of vital signs. In general, clinical death is neither necessary nor sufficient for a determination of legal death. A patient with working heart and lungs determined to be brain dead can be pronounced legally dead without clinical death occurring. Precise medical definition of death, in other words, becomes more problematic, paradoxically, as scientific knowledge and technology advance.
How to define death?
Death would seem to refer to either the moment at which life ends, or when the state that follows life begins. However, determining when death has occurred requires drawing precise conceptual boundaries between life and death. This is problematic however because there is little consensus over how to define life. Some have suggested defining life in terms of consciousness. When consciousness ceases, a living organism can be said to have died. One of the notable flaws in this approach is that there are many organisms which are alive but probably not conscious (for example, single-celled organisms). Another problem with this approach is in defining consciousness, which remains a mystery to modern scientists, psychologists and philosophers. This general problem of defining death applies to the particular challenge of defining death in the context of medicine.
Historically, attempts to define the exact moment of a human's death have been problematic. Death was once defined as the cessation of heartbeat (cardiac arrest) and of breathing, but the development of CPR and prompt defibrillation have rendered that definition inadequate because breathing and heartbeat can sometimes be restarted. Events which were causally linked to death in the past no longer kill in all circumstances; without a functioning heart or lungs, life can sometimes be sustained with a combination of life support devices, organ transplants and artificial pacemakers.
Today, where a definition of the moment of death is required, doctors and coroners usually turn to "brain death" or "biological death" to define a person as being clinically dead; people are considered dead when the electrical activity in their brain ceases. It is presumed that an end of electrical activity indicates the end of consciousness. However, suspension of consciousness must be permanent, and not transient, as occurs during certain sleep stages, and especially a coma. In the case of sleep, EEGs can easily tell the difference.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Update: Assignment #2 Guidelines (extended until Tuesday, November 3, 8pm)
Find the guidlines for assignment #2 below. I've picked the subject of animal rights for several reasons. It's a cutting edge moral topic and it reflects upon one of our most important industries. Read the Wikipedia article of the different arguments: Utilitarian, Rights and Abolitionist, to get an idea of the field you're talking about. This time, I've posted some suggestions as to how to construct your comment. If you have any questions regarding the assignment, you can post them here. I'll close this post, Monday Tuesday, November 3, at 8pm 10pm.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
How to construct your next 150-word comment
1. Offer a reasoned argument correctly. Actually if you state the reason for your arguments correctly there is no wrong answer.
2. Keep it simple. Less is more.
3. If you can, incorporate some independent thoughts into your answer.
4. Discuss your answer to yourself.
5. Don’t write compulsively.
6. Write a draft on WP and correct misspellings and any errors in logic. Write clearly, in proper English. Avoid slang and broken phrases.
Here is an example of a short paper. And here is another. Obviously you are not writing a paper, but a 150 word comment can be considered a sort of mini-paper.
Here are some pointers:
You can state a position by defining it. For example: “Libertarians believe that…” of if talking about a person: “Sartre suggests that so-and-so.”
If you want to suggest a hypothetical situation of your own, go like this: “Suppose that,” or “Imagine so-and-so,” or “Just for the sake of argument…”
Phrase your views properly: “I believe that” or “I suppose,” or any other similar form.
Whenever you compare, you can use, “on the other hand, Locke holds that memories are…”
For conclusion, use: “Therefore”, “As a result,” “Thus,” “In conclusion,” etc.
2. Keep it simple. Less is more.
3. If you can, incorporate some independent thoughts into your answer.
4. Discuss your answer to yourself.
5. Don’t write compulsively.
6. Write a draft on WP and correct misspellings and any errors in logic. Write clearly, in proper English. Avoid slang and broken phrases.
Here is an example of a short paper. And here is another. Obviously you are not writing a paper, but a 150 word comment can be considered a sort of mini-paper.
Here are some pointers:
You can state a position by defining it. For example: “Libertarians believe that…” of if talking about a person: “Sartre suggests that so-and-so.”
If you want to suggest a hypothetical situation of your own, go like this: “Suppose that,” or “Imagine so-and-so,” or “Just for the sake of argument…”
Phrase your views properly: “I believe that” or “I suppose,” or any other similar form.
Whenever you compare, you can use, “on the other hand, Locke holds that memories are…”
For conclusion, use: “Therefore”, “As a result,” “Thus,” “In conclusion,” etc.
Questions about quiz #2?
Morning classes: We have the quiz at the end of the week. Friday, for MWF classes; Thursday for TR classes. If you have any questions regarding the quiz, post it here.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Hensel sisters (and the issue of human identity)
This example points to "identity" as being more than just our bodies.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Crisis in Guinea (female rape)
From the NYTimes:
In the city’s poor neighborhoods, survivors stood in knots in front of shuttered shacklike stores, vowing revenge and rehearsing in painful detail the attack on Monday that appears to have killed as many as 157 people protesting against the government at the September 28th Stadium here, according to opposition and human rights figures. Too fearful to return to work, some vowed to wage civil war against the nation’s new military strongman, the 45-year-old Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara.
At the central morgue, soldiers waved motorists away, shouting at them to “keep moving.” Reclaiming bodies has proved impossible. At the leafy home of Jean-Marie Doré, an elderly opposition leader with half his head covered in a bandage, the crowd fell silent as Mr. Doré described seeing women being sexually assaulted with guns wielded by enraged soldiers two days earlier, as other protesters were hit point blank with bullets.
More on female rape, here.
In the city’s poor neighborhoods, survivors stood in knots in front of shuttered shacklike stores, vowing revenge and rehearsing in painful detail the attack on Monday that appears to have killed as many as 157 people protesting against the government at the September 28th Stadium here, according to opposition and human rights figures. Too fearful to return to work, some vowed to wage civil war against the nation’s new military strongman, the 45-year-old Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara.
At the central morgue, soldiers waved motorists away, shouting at them to “keep moving.” Reclaiming bodies has proved impossible. At the leafy home of Jean-Marie Doré, an elderly opposition leader with half his head covered in a bandage, the crowd fell silent as Mr. Doré described seeing women being sexually assaulted with guns wielded by enraged soldiers two days earlier, as other protesters were hit point blank with bullets.
More on female rape, here.
Monday, October 5, 2009
To be (and not to be) at the same time
Here's Schrödinger's mind experiment: We place a living cat into a steel chamber, along with a device containing a vial of hydrocyanic acid. There is, in the chamber, a very small amount of a radioactive substance. If even a single atom of the substance decays during the test period, a relay mechanism will trip a hammer, which will, in turn, break the vial and kill the cat.
The observer cannot know whether or not an atom of the substance has decayed, and consequently, cannot know whether the vial has been broken, the hydrocyanic acid released, and the cat killed. Since we cannot know, the cat is both dead and alive according to quantum law, in a superposition of states. It is only when we break open the box and learn the condition of the cat that the superposition is lost, and the cat becomes one or the other (dead or alive). This situation is sometimes called quantum indeterminacy or the observer's paradox : the observation or measurement itself affects an outcome, so that the outcome as such does not exist unless the measurement is made. (That is, there is no single outcome unless it is observed.)
You have to understand (1) wave–particle duality: It's a fact that all matter exhibits both wave-like and particle-like properties. A central concept of quantum mechanics, duality addresses the inadequacy of classical concepts like "particle" and "wave" in fully describing the behavior of quantum-scale objects. Orthodox interpretations of quantum mechanics explain this ostensible paradox as a fundamental property of the Universe, while alternative interpretations explain the duality as an emergent, second-order consequence of various limitations of the observer.
(2) Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle: The position and momentum of a particle cannot be simultaneously measured with arbitrarily high precision. This is not a statement about the inaccuracy of measurement instruments, nor a reflection on the quality of experimental methods; it arises from the wave properties inherent in the quantum mechanical description of nature. Even with perfect instruments and technique, the uncertainty is inherent in the nature of things.
Because of the uncertainty principle, statements about both the position and momentum of particles can only assign a probability that the position or momentum will have some numerical value. Therefore it is necessary to formulate clearly the difference between the state of something that is indeterminate, such as an electron in a probability cloud, and the state of something having a definite value. When an object can definitely be "pinned-down" in some respect, it is said to possess an eigenstate.
The paradoxical nature of quantum mechanics is explained by Schrodinger's thought experiment.
Here, a history of quantum mechanics.
Determinism (in process)
The discussion of determinism here. How do Hard Determinists (or Determinists) deal with the ethical problem of responsibility? They assert morality as being caused through hereditary and environmental means.
I'll be adding different arguments in favor and against Determinism.
The counterargument is that without belief in uncaused free will, humans will not have reason to behave ethically. But Determinism, however, does not negate emotions and reason of a person, but simply proposes the source of what causes us to fall back on moral behavior. Determinism implies that moral differences between two people are caused by hereditary predispositions and environmental effects and events. This does not mean determinists are against punishment of people who commit crimes because the cause of a person's morality (depending on the branch of determinism) is not necessarily themselves.
In his 1997 book, The End of Certainty, Ilya Prigogine contends that determinism is no longer a viable scientific belief. "The more we know about our universe, the more difficult it becomes to believe in determinism." This is a major departure from the approach of Newton, Einstein and Schrödinger, all of whom expressed their theories in terms of deterministic equations. According to Prigogine, determinism loses its explanatory power in the face of irreversibility and instability.
I'll be adding different arguments in favor and against Determinism.
The counterargument is that without belief in uncaused free will, humans will not have reason to behave ethically. But Determinism, however, does not negate emotions and reason of a person, but simply proposes the source of what causes us to fall back on moral behavior. Determinism implies that moral differences between two people are caused by hereditary predispositions and environmental effects and events. This does not mean determinists are against punishment of people who commit crimes because the cause of a person's morality (depending on the branch of determinism) is not necessarily themselves.
In his 1997 book, The End of Certainty, Ilya Prigogine contends that determinism is no longer a viable scientific belief. "The more we know about our universe, the more difficult it becomes to believe in determinism." This is a major departure from the approach of Newton, Einstein and Schrödinger, all of whom expressed their theories in terms of deterministic equations. According to Prigogine, determinism loses its explanatory power in the face of irreversibility and instability.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
The anxious mind
“I don’t know,” Baby 19 says after a long pause, twirling her hair faster, touching her face, her knee. She smiles a little, shrugs. Another pause. And then the list of troubles spills out: “When I don’t quite know what to do and it’s really frustrating and I feel really uncomfortable, especially if other people around me know what they’re doing. I’m always thinking, Should I go here? Should I go there? Am I in someone’s way? ... I worry about things like getting projects done... I think, Will I get it done? How am I going to do it? ... If I’m going to be in a big crowd, it makes me nervous about what I’m going to do and say and what other people are going to do and say.” Baby 19 is wringing her hands now. “How I’m going to deal with the world when I’m grown. Or if I’m going to sort of do anything that really means anything.”
It turns that it has to do with brain states:
Kagan often talks about the three ways to identify an emotion: the physiological brain state, the way an individual describes the feeling and the behavior the feeling leads to. Not every brain state sparks the same subjective experience; one person might describe a hyperaroused brain in a negative way, as feeling anxious or tense, while another might enjoy the sensation and instead uses a positive word like “alert.” Nor does every brain state spark the same behavior: some might repress the bad feelings and act normally; others might withdraw. But while the behavior and the subjective experience associated with an emotion like anxiety might be in a person’s conscious control, physiology usually is not.
One possible conclusion is how we interpret the mental state. How it "feels" to us (in class we called it qualia).
...having all the earmarks of anxiety in the brain does not always translate into a subjective experience of anxiety. “The brain state does not make it a disorder,” Kagan told me. “The brain state exists, and the statement ‘I’m anxious,’ exists, and the correlation is imperfect.” Two people can experience the same level of anxiety, he said, but one who has interesting work to distract her from the jittery feelings might do fine, while another who has just lost his job spends all day at home fretting and might be quicker to reach a point where the thrum becomes overwhelming. It’s all in the context, the interpretation, the ability to divert your attention from the knot in your gut.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Paleoanthropology
For those of you interested in the recent developments in paloanthropology. See that most of the findings date from less than 10 years. Click each one of the links for more details of these early ancestors.
By the way, there was a "hobbit." It's called Homo Floresiensis.
For a PBS interactive site, click here.
For the evolution of continents, here.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Ardi, the oldest human skeleton, is a female
Front page on the NYTimes on line: Ardi, short for Ardipithecus ramidus, is the newest fossil skeleton out of Africa to take its place in the gallery of human origins. At an age of 4.4 million years, it lived well before and was much more primitive than the famous 3.2-million-year-old Lucy, of the species Australopithecus afarensis.
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From the Huffington Post: The big news in the Journal of Science tomorrow is the discovery of the oldest human skeleton -a small-brained, 110-pound female of the species Ardipithecus ramidus, nicknamed "Ardi." She lived in what is now Ethiopia 4.4 million years ago, which makes her over a million years older than the famous "Lucy" fossil, found in the same region thirty-five years ago.