The Fundamental Rights

Since in some earlier posts I've talked about individual rights, let me specify what I believe the fundamental rights to be.
Obviously, presence in the Bill of Rights does NOT make something a fundamental right. The right to marriage, the right to bare arms, the right to raise one's children as one sees fit, etc., although they may or may not be rights, cannot be FUNDAMENTAL rights either, since they are dependant on other rights and circumstances.
(On a side note, "States' Rights" and any other sort of collective right, in my opinion, only exist as long they do not violate individual rights, as collectives are wont to do. This is why I believe one of the functions of federal government should be to make sure that state governments do not violate individual rights, and likewise state governments should make sure county governments and city governments respect individual rights, etc.)

So here's my attempt to define some fundamental rights:

1. The right to freely pursue truth and meaning--and to advocate one's vision of it--and to be given the greatest opportunity to do so. This right is absolute.

2. "The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right...The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. (John Stuart Mill)" Offense is not a valid form of harm. This right requires more than some qualification.

3. The right to be judged and treated based on individual merits and faults.

(The first two rights are really one right, individual sovereignty, but I divided it into two because while the right to freedom of thought is absolute, the right to freedom of action [without harm to others] becomes necessarily restricted.)

Notes:
The first right's meaning is obvious, although the "opportunity to do so..." part requires some explanation: a right to pursue truth and meaning is useless if one's access to ideas is restricted. Therefore, as part of a right to pursue truth and meaning, we also must include the right to access to ideas and a right to education, both of which are implied by the "opportunity to do so...".
(Getting into murkier territory, it is also my opinion that this right extends to children, since beliefs formed during childhood are very hard to shake off, which is a barrier to a pursuit of truth and meaning. But this also ends up requiring much qualification.)
Also, it should be noted that this right implies all of the rights enumerated in the First Amendment of the Constitution, as well as the right to the "Pursuit of Happiness" (if happiness is the individuals idea of meaning). The right to not be killed is also implied, since it's hard to pursue anything if you're dead ;-)

The second right will require a discussion of it's own.

If the third right seems a little confusing, just add "instead of being judged and treated based on race, gender, nationality, class, sexuality, etc."

Materialism, Spiritualism, and Humanism

(inspired by reading Douglas Hofstadter)
Why should spiritualism and materialism be incompatible? Or spiritualism and humanism?
Consider: materialistically, the human brain is a lump of matter not much bigger than two fists, the thoughts that one perceives nothing than chemical reactions and the firing of neurons. Yet this utterly insignificant lump of chemistry is capable of modeling an entire house, many times bigger than itself. It is capable of perceiving the expansiveness of a mountain range. It is capable of enveloping within it's processes the workings of the universe. And, if this brain is the brain of a fiction writer, of creating and managing universes of its own, such as the worlds of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, which contain within them characters with thought processes seemingly of their own. Is there not something profoundly spiritual in that?
There is room for souls in a materialistic universe, as long as one is willing to expand their notion of a soul, not as some immaterial ghost that inhabits our minds, but as a natural creation of the processes of our brains. This makes it no less real! To say the soul doesn't exist because it's "no more" than chemical reactions...well, one might as well argue that happiness, sadness, love, war, the law do not exist either. These are all ideas, and ideas are "nothing more" than chemical processes, yet they exert an obvious influence on the world, they interact with each other, and they operate in ways of their own (look up emergence theory). Or one could argue that this computer, my chair, cars, blocks of wood, and any other of the many things which to us humans have obvious existence are nothing more than the interaction of subatomic particles. In fact, at a certain level, it IS meaningless to talk about the distinction between objects, because at a small enough level there really isn't any such distinction: you cannot say "that atom belongs to the computer and that atom next to it belongs to the desk". So if one is going to argue that the soul does not exist because it's "nothing more" than a collection of chemical processes one must also be willing to argue that computers, chairs, cars, and block of wood don't exist either. It all becomes very Zen-like, which isn't a problem, but involves operating at an entirely different level. Indeed, it's all a question of levels: you get to the subatomic level and the distinction between objects and the concept of a soul have dissappeared, you get to a galactic level and object and souls are so insignicant that distinctions between them disappear, but somewhere in between, at our level, both exist. These arguments also have obvious implications for God and Religion.
And sepaking of God and Religion, I'd like to address and issue of particular importance to Unitarian-Universalists, but really of importance to everybody: the conflict between Secular Humanism and Spiritualism. I do consider myself unabashedly a Secular Humanist, and the definition fits me to a t, yet I'm embarassed by the allergic reactions many Secular Humanists seem to have to mentions of God or anything spiritual. I think embracing the full meaning of "Humanism" REQUIRES an acceptance and respect of spiritualism, for this too is part of the human experience. Indeed, it is one of the greatest accomplishments of the human creativity which Humanists so admire. I'm not asking for us to give up our commitment to secularism, but instead broaden our concept of it to embrace a definition similar to tah expounded by the Dalai Lama: "I call these secular ethics, secular beliefs. There’s no relationship with any particular religion. Even without religion, even as nonbelievers, we have the capacity to promote these things." Secularism, and particular Secular Humanism, should not be exclusionary, but inclusionary.

Metaphysics

This is something my brain started throwing at me while I was walking, I haven't taken the time to go over it thoroughly, so it's probably a bit sketchy, but interesting nonetheless.
We have a problem with metaphysics. The problem is that the only language we have to talk about it is a language that is ill-equipped to talk about it. Our language is terribly imprecise, filled with hidden assumptions, limited, parochial, inherently worldly, and a host of other things. When you try to translate from one language to another, as we do if we try to discuss, say, Greek philosophy, or Biblical doctrine, there is meaning that is lost: how, indeed, can we be sure that the meaning we give the translation is anything like the meaning the ancient Greeks had in mind?
We then try to take this unwieldy language and use it to talk about things that are entirely out of it's league: is there a self? Is there a soul? What is a soul? Is there free will? Is there a god? Do things really exist? What does it mean to "exist"? What does "meaning" mean? It just gets worse and worse!
Not only that, but these aren't pointless questions: some of them are of vital importance! What then do we do?
For ideas, let's consider a way of describing the world that's a little more down-to-earth: regular Physics. Now, when you think about it, physics is also impossible to describe with language. Sure, you can say that "gravity makes objects attract each other, etc.", but you'd be missing a whole bunch of meaning and nuance, and once you described gravity this way, you'd be stuck: no new discoveries could be made. Your description would also be terribly imprecise and would run into problems of translation to other languages.
That's not the hardest physics to describe with language, though. What about Quantum Physics: "well it's sort of a wave and sort of a particle but really it isn't either but sometimes it's both except when it interacts with something..." ugh! Or four dimensions, which are entirely impossible to characterize using human language except through analogy.
There is, however, a language which describes physics. And it is precise, with assumptions that are, for the most part, clearly defined, universal, and has no need to be translated from one language to another, since except perhaps for some differences in symbols, it is the same for everybody. Mathematics. And in mathematics, things like Quantum Physics, which are so impossible to describe in human language, are clearly defined, and four dimensions even more so.
So it seems to me what we need is language that is to Metaphysics what mathematics is to Physics. What it could be I don't know.
Regardless, I am going to continue to discuss metaphysics in regular, human language :)

Utilitarianism

It is my belief that human beings do things for one of two reasons: pleasure or impulse/habit. Let me specify: by "pleasure" I mean only what they BELIEVE will cause them more pleasure than pain (however human beings are often quite horrid at making such judgements), and it is also the case that even though they may rationally believe that something will more pain than pleasure in the long term--such as drug use--nevertheless for psychological reasons the short-term net pleasure outweighs the long-term net pain. Indeed, all such pleasure/pain decisions are ultimately made in regards to how they make us feel right now, in the immediate future.
(And though it's irrelevant to this argument, by "impulse/habit" I mean those actions that come from no decision, such as reflex actions.)
Many would argue at this point that many times people resist doing what they believe will cause them the most pleasure because it is "wrong". But it seems to me that in cases like this the decision is made on the basis of net pleasure: when we avoid doing something we really want to do because it's "wrong", we are responding to something within us that we believe would cause us to experience pain in response to the "wrongness", and we find that this pain outweighs any potential pleasure. The inverse is true when we do something we would rather not because it's "right": we decide that the pain that would result from NOT doing what's right is greater than the pleasure. (By the way, "right" depends on one's value system, so for instant rationalists behave rationally because to not do so would violate their value system, causing pain.)
Some people get very upset at this point and say "does that mean that the only reason we are altruistic is because it makes us feel better?" to which I say: yes. However, there's an assumption here which I do not understand: the idea that there's something wrong with us performing altruistic actions because they make us feel good. What's in the least bit wrong with the fact that doing good things for other people makes us ourselves feel good? It seems to me that this is a great confirmation of the goodness of human nature!
(By the way, in regards to self-destructive behavior, once again my contention is that the pain is outweighed by the psycholgocial pleasure, or is outweighed by the pain that would be caused by not giving in to compulsion.)
That is my explanation of individual motivation. Now onto it's implications for ethics, which is utilitarianism. "What is good is what will ultimately cause the greatest amount of net pleasure for the greatest number of entities." (I use "entities" so that this definition can include pleasure beyond hat of human beings.) I am humbly following John Stuart Mill here, but adding a lot of my own touches.
First let me defend my assertion that pleasure=good. My observation is that this is, in fact, what human beings already believe, although perhaps not consciously. Consider: can you think of a single thing that is considered "good" that is not expected to cause pleasure? If we give medicine to people it's because we expect that it will cause them long-term pleasure (and this belief causes us pleasure). If we save someone's life it's because we believe that living is somehow more pleasurable than dying (and once again, when with this belief in mind we save someone's life, it makes us feel good). If someone is a selfish psychopath and considers killing people "good" it is only because, being incapable of taking others' pain into account, they derive pleasure from it. If people believe abortions are OK it is because they believe the potential pain of the mother is more important to avoid than the potential pain of the fetus (which may not even exist); if they are against abortion it's because they believe the opposite (this is a massive oversimplification of the issue, by the way). If someone tries to get people to turn to Christ it is because they believe that this will cause those people more long term pleasure when they are saved.
(Religion, in fact, depends on a certain hedonism, since all religions I know of offer some sort of ultimate reward and/or punishment to support their claims that you should do this and not that. Even religious people who are not concerned with this ultimate reward still behave in the way proscribed by their faith because to do otherwise would cause net pain.)
"The greatest pleasure for the greatest number of entities." The "greatest number of entities" part is a bit harder to justify, except that I once again believe it is a natural belief of humanity, and also I believe it is a logical consequence of hedonism if one recognizes the fuzziness of "self" (to be discussed in some future post).
Finally, I am not sure I believe Utilitarianism to be the ultimate form of morality, but I do believe it is an important part. I also think that it is of ultimate importance to qualify utilitarianism with a fundamental respect of individual rights, since otherwise it is very easy for forms of society such as dictatorships, fascist, communist, etc., to be justified. Of primary concern is the right to freedom of thought and speech, for reasons enumerated in my "Old FaceBook Note: My thoughts on the UU principles (for my fellow UUs)- Part 2", and also for more epistomolgical reasons which I will discuss later.

Logic Idea (that someone probably already thought of)

I'm in the process of reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence", and it's gotten me all fired up so
Coming Soon! INTERESTING philosophical blog posts...

...

But UNTIL then I just wanted to share the fact that I think I may have come up with an expansion of logic that someone else has probably already thought of, and let me know if you know who has. Where it came from was in "Motorcycle Maintenence" there was discussed the concept of Mu, which is a concept in Zen meaning "No answer" "Neither" etc., as opposed to a definite "Yes" or "No". This led me to wonder whether a system of logic could be built using the "Mu" term.
Specifically, I was thinking about how you could incorporate the "Mu" concept into the logical operators AND, OR, and NOT, since by combining these operators, at least I've heard and been told, one can make any logical statement.
A lot of you probably don't know what AND, OR, and NOT mean. All of these operations do something to some statement or set of statements that are determined to be True or False. In doing so they also form a new statement which is True or False.
AND joins two statements and claims that these statements are both True. The English "and" sometimes serves this function, though not always: an example where it does is "He is wearing a hat and a jacket", in which you are claiming that the statements "He is wearing a hat" and "He is wearing a jacket" are both true. If either statement or both statements are False, then the joint statement is false, i.e. if he isn't wearing a hat then he can't be wearing "a hat and jacket", and if he's wearing neither...you get the idea.
OR joins two statements and claims that AT LEAST one of them is True. It's important to note that it's different from English "or" in that it also allows for both of the statements to be true: it's English equivalent is really "and/or" which is what I will use in the example. "He is wearing a hat and/or (OR) a jacket" is true if he's wearing both, if he's wearing one or the other, but not if he's wearing neither.
Finally NOT, which is really easy: it simply takes a statement and claims the opposite. We are at an advantage in that English "not" does exactly what logical NOT does. So in the statement "He is not wearing a coat" you are simply taking the statement "He is wearing a coat" and claiming that the opposite is true. (By the way, double NOTs cancel, so for instance the statement "He is not not wearing a coat" means he IS wearing a coat).
By the way, these operations can be combined in any number of ways.
It's useful to think of these operations in terms of truth tables, with T (or 1 or Yes or...) meaning "True" and F (or 0 or...) meaning "False". The left column(s) are the begining statements or input and the right column is the final statment or output. What you get is the following:

AND:
T|T|T
T|F|F
F|T|F
F|F|F

(If this table doesn't make sense:
T AND T=T
T AND F=F
F AND T=F
F AND F=F)

OR
T|T|T
T|F|T
F|T|T
F|F|F

NOT
T|F
F|T

(meaning "NOT T=F"; "NOT F=T")

So anyway, on to my idea! I quickly realized that tackling "Mu" was too much of a challenge, so I decided to approach the problem of using "Undetermined", which I'll call "U", instead. What would be the truth value of a statement such as "He is wearing a hat and a coat" if you're not sure whether he's wearing a coat? If he might be wearing a coat, but then again he might not be?
So here's the sort of truth table we'd like to draw for an operation such as AND


AND:
T|T|T
T|F|F
F|T|F
F|F|F
U|U|?
U|T|?
T|U|?
U|F|?
F|U|?

and just fill in the question marks, which is really quite easy. For each row you just assume that U could mean True, then assume that it could mean False, and see if all the answers you come up with are one or the other, and go from there.

So for the AND table:

U|U|?
If both Us are T then (T|T|T)
If one U is T and the other is F then (T|F|F) or F AND T=F (F|T|F)
If both Us are F then (F|F|F)
Some of the outputs are T, and some of them are F, which means you have no clue what your going to get so the end result is U|U|U.

U|T|? or T|U|?
If U is T then T|T|T
If U is F then F|T|F or T|F|F
Once again, some of the outputs are T, and some of them are F, etc. etc., so U|T|U and T|T|U.

U|F|? or F|U|?
If U is T then T|F|F or F|T|F
If U is F then F|F|F
Eureka! It turns out no matter what you get and F, so U|F|F and F|U|F

I'm not going to bother going through OR, but I did work it out as I did for AND, and NOT should be pretty obvious: if you don't know whether something is true or false, you can't know whether it isn't true or isn't false!
So for all the operations:

AND:
T|T|T
T|F|F
F|T|F
F|F|F
U|U|U
U|T|U
T|U|U
U|F|F
F|U|F

OR
T|T|T
T|F|T
F|T|T
F|F|F
U|U|U
U|T|T
T|U|T
U|F|U
F|U|U

NOT
T|F
F|T
U|U

and a new operation, named "MU" in honer of my original intention. It's english equivalents are words such as "possibly" or "might be, but I don't know for sure if", as in "He is possibly wearing a hat".

MU
T|U
F|U
U|U

As you can see, it just turns anything into a U.

So who already thought of this and is it useful in any way?

Old FaceBook Note: My thoughts on the UU principles (for my fellow UUs)-Part 1.934

This should really come before my previous post. Anyway, it wraps up my series of old FaceBook notes (thankfully, perhaps). Now on to writing new material!

Just an interesting little idea that came up when I was thinking about all this--the seven principles can sort of be categorized into three groups, as follows. (I say "sort of"--obviously there are a lot of nuances and overlaps that this ignores. But it's still interesting.)

Inherent Worth Principles:
~Justice ("Justice, equity, and...")/Acceptance ("Acceptance of...")
~World Community

Responsible Search/Right of Conscience Principles:
~Spiritual Growth
~Democratic Process

The Interdependant Web Principle
(I've always thought the Interdependant Web principle was sort of the odd one out--it doesn't "follow" from or relate to any of the other principles in any direct way. So it's in it's very own category.)

Old FaceBook Note: My thoughts on the UU principles (for my fellow UUs)- Part 2

For UU info: www.uua.org.

For me, the most important principle is "The free and responsible search for truth and meaning". It is adherence to this principle that prevents Unitarian-Universalism from developing any sort of dogma. For instance, while the principle of "The inherent worth and dignity and each and every person" is a good principle, indeed probably THE most undeniably sacred principle we have (excluding, of course, the free and responsible search for truth and meaning), nevertheless it is theoretically possible that this principle is, in fact, "false" (in quotations because it is impossible for a value judgement such as "worth" to be strictly false), and if contemplation, revelation, and experience reveal it to be false, we need to be able to reject it through the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.(The Inherent Worth principle is an interesting example because, even though it is less important in my mind than the Free and Responsible Search princple, nevertheless the latter, in many ways, depends on the former.)This principle also prevents us from enforcing a viewpoint, however noble it may be, on individuals within our community (and in the world at large)--and that we cannot deny them participation in the community--once again, avoiding dogma (as you may be able to tell, I approach these questions from an individualistic perspective). At the same time, it prevents the individual from enforcing THEIR viewpoint. (Although in both these cases, it is important to be pragmatic: sometimes [indeed usually] the needs of the community require that we enforce some sort of practical viewpoint, usually about proper behavior, to ensure that things run smoothly).However, this does NOT mean that we shouldn't advocate our viewpoints, as a community and as individuals, and advocating them forcefully (but not through use of force) when there is a need to do so. This is because the one's search for truth and meaning has to be free AND responsible. To often the responsibility part is forgotten. UUism is accused by others as being a religion where "you can believe anything you want", and I think often even we as UUs also think that we CAN believe whatever we want. But that is not, in my opinion, responsible. For me, being responsible in one's search for truth and meaning means constantly challenging one's own beliefs, constantly submitting them to change and improvement, on logical, empirical, and spiritual grounds. It also means not being afraid of having one's beliefs criticized and challenged by others, but instead considering others' arguments and changing one's beliefs appropriately. On my part, I try to distrust any comfortably held belief. I also believe I have the right to challenge the beliefs of others, not because I want to convince them of the rightness, necessarily, of my beliefs (although being human, especially a teenage human, it's unlikely I am anything approaching pure in this regard [or any for regards for that matter]), but because I want to "rock the boat" a little, and get them thinking. (Obviously it is unfair for me to insist on challenging the beliefs of someone who is equally insistant that they want me to stop doing so.) There is something that one of the people who ran the "Coming of Age" thing said that sticks with me: "it's not that one has the right to their beliefs, but that they have the right to DEFEND their beliefs".

Old FaceBook Note: My thoughts on the UU principles (for my fellow UUs)-Part 1

For info on Unitarian-Universalism: www.uua.org.

As an exercise, I decided to figure out how I'd organize the 7 principles if it was up to me to do so. I used the following criteria:
Historical Importance
Philosophical Importance
Extent to which people overall consider the principles to be fundamental to their UU identity
A whole lot of personal preference (this was the main criterion, in fact)
and some other stuff which I'll go into eventually.
Obviously, things like "Philosophical Importance" are rather pretentious-sounding, and I'll try to explain my reasoning for the placement of each individual principle in future posts. Mostly I just did this for fun.

So here are the original 7 principles:
The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

And here is how I reorganized them:
The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
A free and responsible search for truth and meaning (and the right of conscience);
Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations (and acceptance of one another);
Encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part;
The use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.

My basic idea is that the principles are organized in such a way that they are kind of like Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robotics, in the sense that the ones at the top override the ones at the bottom (not that they are usually contradictory). Also, I imagine that the ones at the top are considered more "sacred", in the sense that they are less open to change than the ones at the bottom (as I said, I'll explain my reasoning).
You'll probably notice that some of the principles look rather different. This is because some of the principles as originally stated were really two principles that had been combined. While these combined principles are similar and closely related, such combinations made it so that they wouldn't fit properly into the system I was trying to devise. I didn't want to get rid of any part of the 7 principles as originally stated, but I also didn't want to turn any one of the principles into two and thereby expand the number of principles to more than seven (seven is a good number for numerical [look up the number 7 in religion, mythology, etc.] and poetic reasons [doesn't "Our 7 principles" just simply sound better than "Our 8 principles" or "Our 9 principles"?].) So what I did was combine the part of the principle that was causing problems with another principle that it fit with better (in my system). So with "Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth..." I moved the "Acceptance" part into the "Justice" principle. And with "The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process", I moved "The right of conscience" into the "Responsible search" principle.

Old FaceBook Note: My crankpot theory

Terrible quality, but whatever; it's fun:

I was going to write a note with a list of crankpot scientific theories i had about the universe, but then something awesome happened: I got my Scientific American and it had an article about a new theory that's remarkable similar to mine.So this was my crankpot theory: that the ultimate theory of everything could have something to do with fractals. If you don't know what fractals are, look them up: they're awesome and also very pretty.Basically, a fractal is a geometrical object that looks the same no matter how far you zoom in on it.

A fractal.
My reasons for coming up with this theory:1: Fractals are cool2: Fractals are EVERYWHERE!!! For instance, mountains are like fractals: if you zoom in on a mountain, you get rocks; if you zoom in on rocks, they look like mountains. Broccoli is also like this (each little sprig [if that's what you call pieces of broccli) looks like the entire broccoli). As are rivers (you have the big river with little rivers splitting of from it, which have little rivers splitting off from them, etc.). Things that appear everywhere are good candidates for unified theories, at least in my opinion.

Broccoli that resembles a fractal.
3: My impression is that one of the problems with coming up with a quantum theory of gravity is that relativistic spacetime is smooth while in quantum physics space is rough. This made me think of the Koch Snowflake (which you can also look up), which is made up of a bunch of little jagged peices that create what appears to be a smooth line.

A Koch Snowflake.
4: Fractals do wonky things to the concept of dimensions. Since all the other hopeful ultimate theories do weird things to dimensions, this seemed like a good reason.Now none of these reasons seems to be the reason that fractals show up in the theory that Scientific American wrote about (which I won't elaborate on), but it's still cool when it seems someone else who is probably smarter than you is actually working on a similar idea to something you thought up.