Leon on Everything

A few weeks ago (or more) on a Thursday, a friend of mine who is also a colleague at work calls me up to hang out with him at night. Friday was going to be his last day at the firm, and as I was in Toronto, and so was he. He wanted to hang out and have a beer and talk about the good times and the not so good times. What the friend did not know was that I expected his call. The logical part of my brain knew that Friday was going to be his last day and that he would want to hang out before. But the illogical part was interpreting a dream I had the night before where I saw him talking to me about going out for a drink at night. This latter case is an example of what psychologist Carl Jung had called Synchronicity.  At some point in his career studying and curing mental illness, Carl Jung would succumb to insanity for a period. It might have been during this period or after it that he wrote about “synchronicity an acausal connecting principle.” He starts this short volume by reca...

Brutus orchestrated a plot to assassinate Caesar. One might think that he could have done otherwise - he could have had a change of heart; he could have remained loyal to Caesar, etc. But, according to Peter Van Inwagen (a twentieth-century Philosopher), if the laws of nature that govern our world are deterministic, then Brutus could not have done otherwise. First, let’s define our terms. Determinism is the idea that the universe unfolded in a completely predictable manner to some observer who is outside the universe. In other words, the initial state of the universe made sure that all subsequent states will occur. If you were to replay the tape of the universe, it would unfold in the same way. And this is due to the laws of physics that make sure that whatever happens will follow then and happen in the same way. We note that the predictability is to an outsider of the universe, as an agent in the universe would be able to predict its own actions and not take them, thus producing...

A stunning conclusion of 20 th -century philosophy is that there are properties in the world that are not amenable to scientific exploration. This conclusion sprang from the study of consciousness. We are all conscious, or so we believe. But this consciousness, this experience of being each one of us has so far escaped science. In fact, from a scientific perspective, it is just easy to imagine a functional human being without consciousness. The latter notion of a nonconscious functional human being is known as a Philosophical Zombie or P-Zombie. Such a P-Zombie as the thought experiment goes, acts just like a functional human being but doesn’t have consciousness. And from the perspective of science, it is impossible to tell the difference with a conscious human being. But what is consciousness? Frank Jackson, a 20 th -century philosopher, in one of his seminal papers, introduces this notion of Qualia. Qualia is the feeling that we humans (and probably animals) have of...

In Philosophy and Logic, the Problem of Evil is a challenge to the existence of God. Or rather it challenges the existence of a kind of God who is: Omniscient, Omnibenevolent, and Omnipotent. Let us begin by defining these three properties. Firstly, a being is omniscient when she knows all there is to know. She knows every fact. Hence, she can know all states of reality and everything that has happened and will happen. Secondly, Omnibenevolence is when said being is all Good. She is Good, and her Goodness is opposed to Evil. Such a being will seek to destroy Evil whenever it appears. Thirdly, an Omnipotent being is one who can do anything. There is no way for such a being to will something and not be able to do it. Many religions claim that God is all knowing, all Good and all Powerful so with the triple-O properties. Now we present the problem of Evil: (1)     There is evil in the world. (2)     If a Triple-O propertied God were to exist, ...

I have recently used my ten year USA visa to visit New York City. I spent four days in Manhattan going to fancy restaurants and seeing various sites. And what struck me most was how dirty and how unimpressive the city was. I was happy to see my sister who was visiting there, but I aside from moderately better weather I couldn't see why it might make sense to leave a much cleaner and cheaper (in terms of living expenses) Montreal to go live there. Over a decade ago I would have given anything to go live in New York City. As many Lebanese and third world citizens, I have grown up with this fantasy image of America. This shining city on the hill where everything was possible. Growing up during in war thorn Lebanon in the 1980s I would look through my Television screen to see those skyscrapers and those cities where everyone was happy, where things were happening, where life was interesting. Even today, despite Donald Trump, millions around the world line up i...

The white billiard ball hits the red ball. The red ball hits the green ball. The green ball hits the blue ball which falls in the hole. Such is the stroke of a master pool player. Everything was planned, and money was exchanged. Our intrepid billiard player won the match. Let us consider a thought experiment. What you may ask? A Gedankenexperiment in German or thought experiment is a way to examine a hypothesis or theory to think through its consequences. One of the most famous Gedankenexperiments is Schrodinger’s cat. In this experiment of indeterminism, we consider a random quantum process – such as the decay of a uranium atom – that controls a gun. The gun is in a box aimed at a cat. Because of the indeterminism of the process, we think that while we haven’t opened the box and made our measurement the cat is in a state of being dead and alive at the same time. Which of course is impossible and gives us more insight into quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics and physics is k...

A few nights ago, I finally got around to watching something on Netflix. It was a show called “Altered Carbon”. You might have heard of it, it is Big. The basic premise of the show is that in some distant future people have a device inserted into the connection between the spinal cord and the brain called the “Stack”. This “Stack” stores all the electric signals that happen in the brain. When someone dies, his “Stack” gets inserted into another body and animates the brain. As such the other body will have the consciousness of the previous person and so, they claim, people end up living forever. Of course, with sci-fi scenery, sex, drugs and violence you suspend disbelief and get on with the story, which is entertaining. But this post is not about entertainment, it is about a branch of philosophy long seen as a form of mental masturbation: Metaphysics. So, let us step in the world of the consciousness metaphysicist armed with his favorite tool: A thought experiment. Let us imagin...