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Descartes’ Demon

Before philosophyforums.com was hacked, there was something I was touching on in relation to Rene Descartes. What that was, was how there has been a lack of literature touching on Descartes’ demon.

The problem I have is that Descartes has no legitimate reason to believe his senses are correct. The phrase “I think; therefore I am” is flawed. Along a time-space spectrum, his thinking occurs along various points in times as does his identity. As a Buddhist concept, the self is changing, one flame on a candle being transferred to another candle. So, he is never the same self as he is contemplating his own existence: He is simply deceived as to having a whole “self.”

Thus, the demon, metaphorically, is his ignorance. However, I can take this a step further and actually bring a demon into existence, as much as bringing a God into existence. The idea that God is the Truth is an issue, because if God is everything, then God is not only the Truth but also The Illusion. And, sure enough, God eludes us all, thus being a masterful illusionist preventing its existence being known.

But I think the illusion is the demon, the ignorance. Synonymous.

So, with that, I’d like to put forth that reality may as well be an illusion. It’s both an illusion and the truth. The truth is that reality is an illusion.

Some things I want to write about

Here is a list of topics that I want to write about:

  1. Is society sustainable?
  2. Should society focus on changing the language it uses?
  3. How can we make the criminal justice system “better”?
  4. Does most of the world have schizoaffective disorder?

Now, someone might ask, “What do you mean does most of the world have schizoaffective disorder?”

We have a world where people believe in free will, use words that imply having free will at some point in time, and the such: People believe they somehow are “free” and able to escape determinism, eternalism, etc.. the such. Now, if we take certain philosophical paradigms as true, then yeah, the majority of the world is straight-up bonkers. I’m not sure we can say they are legally insane. We “can’t,” if we say we don’t have free-will. Does it qualify as legal insanity? Are the necessary criteria met? Well, again, that’s like asking if I “can” even cause a criteria set to occur.

So, there ends up being a breakdown of language. Deconstructive nihilism.

If I were to empathize, though, legal insanity tends to be thinking people are something other than they really are: You think you see a bear rather than actually seeing a human. Being delusional means you believe something that is not true. And the sticky issue becomes, “What is true?” “How do you define Truth?” “How do you define what is true?”

So, I would posit that it’s true that free will does not exist. So, that kills morality, the idea of responsibility.

I guess if there is no responsibility, one might posit there is no “meaning” to life, as one is not responsible to accomplish anything in one’s lifetime.

You don’t have “Free won’t”

Something that keeps getting on my nerves is the whole Benjamin Libet experiment issue, whereby people argue that you don’t have “Free will” but you have “Free won’t.”

First off, I’ve not completely examined the Benjamin Libet experiments, the published papers, and so forth. Ok, that’s fine. I could go down to a medical library or the public library, request the papers electronically, and start reading them. It’s all hearsay, anyway, so what’s it matter?

Regardless, were I to consider the validity of the papers and experimental results, then a person might find anything I have to say worth something. That doesn’t mean the whole “free won’t” thing is not crap. Because I highly suspect that it’s exactly that: Bullshit. Authors in Scientific American and Psychology Today more than likely undergo cognitive dissonance and end up contradicting themselves.

Here’s someone’s definition of “free won’t,”

We have free will to abort an action. So, we may better think of volitional action in this case not as free will, but as “free won’t.” We can stop an action initiated by our brain nonconsciously.

– source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont-delay/201106/free-wont-it-may-be-all-we-have-or-need

Ok, so there are issues. Once again, there is, as cited and sourced, the pushing forward of the premise by an author that there is “free will.” Ok, so the author in that source is like, “Well, there isn’t free will. Well, ok, there is free will, but I’m going to change its definition to make it exist: it’s now called free won’t. And, sure, I contradicted myself and changed what free will is called rather than changing it’s definition, but I don’t think most people will notice.”

One is the linguistic use of the word “can,” which brings in the philosophy of language. I want to write an article or blog entry about how I believe most of the world has schizoaffective disorder. When people use words, such as “try,” “can,” “will,” or “want,” then they are using a set of words that are part of a “free will lexicon.”

Imagine a world where people didn’t use words or language that implied that somehow they have free will and are able to “change” reality as it is.

 

 

Where do I see the future of science?

I think science ends up failing as a system and methodology. I think the idea of testability and falsifiability ends up getting thrown away. The Daoist anarchists more than likely had things right: Things are what they are. That’s like saying life is a movie. Sure, something about reality could change and people start flying and mentally “willing” magic from their fingertips.

More importantly is looking at things I tried covering some time ago: Einstein’s theories of relativity and the philosophical influence it has. If we’re in a block universe, static as can be, the ideas of repeatability and testability are ideas that require free-will to be accomplished. I think reality ends up becoming a psychological experience, whereby the existential crisis is resolved by the perpetuation of insanity and delusion. Falsification as an idea is an axiological one, whereby in a physicalist reality, there can be no right nor wrong.

So, science dies. The human race ends up in turmoil due to not being able to find any decent resolves of answering the why and hows of reality came to be. Perhaps Gödel’s incompleteness theorem is what drives life into insanity or seeking some reclusive state of mind to never question reality again, thus preventing existential issues. Personally, I’ve considered the reason we can never fully understand reality is because “God” or the universe didn’t/doesn’t want us to: If you understand how things came to be, maybe you could destroy them. In terms of a pain/suffering perspective of life, ending suffering means ending reality: Absolute prevention.

Those are long-term things. Short-term things involve the evolution of STEM. I see transhumanists coming into being if politicians don’t corrupt everything with their greed. With transhumanists, I see society becoming a Type III civilization, looking for other life-forms. I don’t think that will resolve much. Issues such as parallel dimensions, the multiverse, etc.. may come into fruition or at least be observed. The ability to make or observe such may come into fruition.

I see the ideal transhumanist discovering the emotional connectivity with reality, thus being able to manipulate reality with the mind. But at no time do I see the resolve for philosophical problems. The grandfather paradox (time traveler’s paradox) and other issues stick around. Reality becomes a one-track situation. One could only hope for a deus ex machine situation, whereby an individual sits in the driver-seat of God, becoming master of reality in order to change things, thus paradoxes not being an issue.

I think neuroscience is going to head in the direction where people walk around like Dr. Gero from Dragon Ball Z with their brains in robot bodies. It resolves a lot of issues, thus enabling focus on regeneration and restoration to decaying brain parts. I like to think neural Darwinism due to the mechanisms that exist now would beat out any engineering “attempt” to make something better in the next million years. If that hypothesis is wrong, something could be engineered.

With the brain isolated and the body no longer an issue, people will have the opportunity to live long lives and focus on philosophical issues and understanding the “physical” nature of reality. From there, they can get their Star Trek or Stargate on. That doesn’t necessitate anything will be resolved, though. The expansion of the universe will be an issue. If something can be engineered to bounce back thing, great. Punch wormholes, manipulate reality, travel the cosmos, look for other life.

I guess that’s the say science eventually hits a brick wall: The philosophical issues remain. Sure, it’d be great if a scientific description of God could occur. And God might be best described as “the first cause” or “what caused the universe to occur,” if you want to claim that’s quantum fluctuations, some obscure physical phenomenon, etc.. It’s a definitional issue.

Scientifically, I see God as an infinite-dimensional being, thus allowing it to have free-will. It may or may not be logical.

I see the transhumanists taking over for the most part. But with the issues of not seeing time travelers or aliens, it makes a person question if individuals in the “future” are extremely capitalistic or secretive: Selfish vs. reclusive. I think the latin description of science being knowledge is one thing: It’s another to take a perspective that science is what a person uses to accomplish a desire. There are those who engage in science to understand and describe reality as it is. There are others who believe science can be used to understand, describe, and manipulate reality. The last part might seem like a feat of engineering, perhaps at least requiring free-will if not a break in reality: Arguable, any attempt could be the delusional acts of an individual desiring something more from reality.

Some transhumanist schools have leaned toward hedonism, which I suppose is to battle the existential crisis. My subscribed school is truth-seeking, thus is more interested in what exists and does not exist in reality. It may be that “truth” is never found. I’d like to think that if any transhumanist figured out reality, he or she would have found the off-switch, thus putting the universe to an end. My continued existence in reality, as I type this, appears to be evidence that confirms no transhumanist has done such.

An evidential interpretation of my place in reality convinces me that God is not dead. God being reality, nature, all of existence, etc.. God is not dead. As long as God can be defined, God is not dead. As long as there is a definition for God, God is not dead. That doesn’t necessarily mean that one can bring forth a definition in “court,” which might be the only place a definition matters. But the paradoxical relationship between there not being evidence of a God yet still existing seems to only bring forth a solipsistic view of reality, which might be the unfortunate situation of reality.

It could be that reality is simply the mind of God, everything in reality all pre-planned. So, I would say, ideally, science would find a way to kill God. But I also think it’s interesting that nature, reality, and the universe has even allowed at least one individual to think about doing such. But that doesn’t mean it will be possible: And eventually, it appears the death of reality never occurs. It becomes questionable, on a philosophical level, why the universe never dies, doesn’t want to die, or at least doesn’t end. It’s just not part of reality for reality to die.

The thing missing from science is free-will, which science ends up not doing anyone any “good,” which is an axiological ideal requiring free-will in the first place. That may or may not be reasonable, but I think matters of axiological necessitate free-will to exist in the first place.

If you look at medicine, you see the issue. I think the issue with making a stem-cell treatment for AIDs started to show the issue. People tried replicating the stem-cell treatment by breaking bones, something like that, and entering in stem cells that won’t get infected by HIV, and it just wasn’t successful. It could be the discovery wasn’t correct. It could be that free-will is necessary to implement the treatment. A treatment is never conducted. That would require free-will. Doctors would need free-will to treat a patient. Otherwise, it’s just the flow of reality. It ends up appearing a huge situation of chemotaxis. A chemical soup looking for a chemical treatment to alter its chemical makeup. There’s a philosophical topic that deals with that: It goes along the lines that if someone is going to heal, they’ll heal as part of what’s in the great design of reality.

Science ends up going so far as it can be implemented for engineering purposes. It only goes so far for truth-seeking purposes. And it goes only so far to resolve philosophical topics. Once it hits the glass-ceiling, it’s done for.

I think you look around, no time travelers or aliens: It hits the brick wall in the future. The engineering uses seem to be moot. Otherwise, we’d have time travelers around talking about the scientific methodology they used to come back, the science behind “time-space” that their time machine or machine uses.

I don’t think that means a spiritual enlightenment occurs: I’ve come across various spiritualists who argue that being alive is about “loving” others, so I’d imagine that any transcendent beings would come back to our timeline to describe how we can transcend ourselves: Kind of like Morpheus in the Matrix movie helping out Neo to seek the truth. I grew up around a person who believed/(s) in the ascended master theology.

I think the utilitarians and various transhumanists are looking into futures and considering hedonism to be the only thing worth doing. Science is a descriptive technique. Engineering a creative one. If either is an art, either may as well by a sophism.

 

some more possible pseudoscientific junk

I have a hypothesis about reality and God.

Imagine God is free-will and all that can be. Each timeline and universe that is created is a “choice” that God makes. And essentially, God is attempting to figure out how to find another God.

Each extension is a time-line or universe. They end up being deterministic. They can, however, go back into the pool of what God is. Each time an extension occurs, it’s influenced by what is outside of it, thus causing God to change. With that said, one might say, “What’s the point,” and I think my answer is that “God” is learning. God has free-will, makes universes, but finds itself “imperfect” despite being perfect. It’s attempting to figure out if there is more to its existence than simply being.

My hypothesis is that God is looking for another God.

I like to postulate that God is insane. Let’s say schizophrenia or insanity is a complete break from logic, thus being able to step out of the realm of logic. Something about Mental State “x” enables a break from logic. That might mean breaking free from constraints. If God is all that can be, logically so, then logically there can’t be another God. But being God, if God can break logic, then God would be looking for another God. It wouldn’t be logical. So, it’s questionable what to make of it, even if it were possible. Logically, not so, but then the question becomes what kind of “system” or “methodology” is being used to accomplish such.

I think the answer is that God is attempting to break its own ignorance. That’s like saying, God thinks its the only God yet ignorant of how it would be possible for there to be another: Thus, it’s engaging in a method to break its ignorance of what would be necessary to find another God. You might say, then, that God is not God: And that might be the logical answer. But if the system is not dependent on logic, then logic is thrown out the window.

There might be a multiverse

What if… what if …

Well, let me throw out an idea: everything that could exist does exist. Infinite universes seems to create the issue that if there is a person that can cause something to occur, there is another that would cancel out that possibility, thus making it feel as though there is one universe.

Imagine the following:

There exists a person in a universe that cause A to occur. There exists a person in a universe that can prevent A to occur. Their existences cancel out, thus giving the appearance there is no multiverse. But then you might make the logical argument that if a person can travel to this universe, then he or she cannot be prevented.

So, with the infinite universe idea, there MUST be a person in an outside universe who wants to let me know that he or she is (1) from another universe, (2) prove such, (3) do such right now. I looked around me after typing such, and encountered no such being: One might take such to be evidence of absence that there are not infinite universes, thus the multiverse idea is not practical, at least for there to be infinite universes.

Part of me, then has been considering what if there is an aspect of reality, however, that does exist. Let’s call this the realm of the “imaginary.” It exists. It’s a dimension of it’s own. And it’s “imaginary,” whereby it’s like a Platonic realm where crossover is possible.

I’ll throw a bone and give an example.

In Dragon Ball Z, Goku learns to go faster than light after he learns instant transmission. As such, he has become a master of reality in his dimension.

You might think that’s questionable. Let’s take Goku and throw him in the hypercube shown in the Cube 2 movie. Goku would use his brute strength and instant transmission, and he would more than likely get out of there real fast. You might posit that a 5th dimensional being would be able to see the maze for what it is, but Goku uses brute strength (using FTL technology: instant transmission) and gets out after using a brute force hacking methodology of using every combination of getting out of there.

Now let’s take that knowledge a step further. Goku exists inside his dimension. Interestingly, using his FTL knowledge, he figured out his reality is like a hypercube. He found a way out. Making things more interesting, it possible that the Goku that comes back to Earth from space is actually a damn lie. Everything you see Goku doing on television is a damn lie. The cell games: A damn lie. Fighting buu: A damn lie. The only Goku you need to concern yourself is the Goku that occurs once he learns FTL technology.

If we argue that being able to master FTL technology provides an individual to live an infinite if not close to infinite amount of time, that’s like saying Goku spent an infinite amount of time in his reality, coming to understand the aspects of reality that he was bound in, and eventually finding an exit door. And with that, he might have come to realize there are people observing him on the television screen. And once he learned that, he created a huge number of illusions to prevent anyone from following him, catching up to him, and taking him down. After Goku learned FTL technology, he soon enough found out how to travel to another dimension.

I guess if anyone follows Flash or The Flash comics, something similar happens with The Flash. The thing is, however, a person argues that these individuals are of “fantasy.” Well, so is the number “one.” But we don’t generally attribute characteristics to the number one, such as the ability to engage in FTL travel.

So it comes to the next question, why would an individual deceive others as to him or herself being a multiverse being, that there being a multiverse, and teaching others how to go into the multiverse. I think the answer is that there is something axiological about it. If one uses empathy, one could consider that amount of heroic nature an individual must possess to be able to involve him or herself with such matters. A level of social order or innature knowledge of social order would be necessary. This seems to contradict with multiverse beings that are discussed in comics: I don’t know if the Beyonder would contradict such.

A person might ask what gave me these ideas. I’d have to say it was the curious nature of observing some animes, thinking to myself, “Wouldn’t it be peculiar if x, y, z occurred in the anime?” and then such happening shortly soon enough in the episode I was watching. It was at the least worthy of raising an eyebrow, that such was either a coincidence or something.

But I do think there is one other thing worthy of mention here. Something that leads me to believe if not question the multiverse. It’s something that has caused me to question if we live in something like Valhalla. It’s “new evidence.” It’s a concept in court.

New evidence is anything that wasn’t presented when it could have been presented as evidence. But what if a God or Goddess your worship is someone or something that can carry you through to victory in a court case. If somehow you lose the case, does that mean your God or Goddess was falsified? Well, under total falsification, you might consider that in no way will your God or Goddess present itself in reality again to save your arse from potentially harmful issues in court. However, there have been interesting things going on in reality: Loki, Thor, Jesus, Moses, etc… find their ways into our media still. Gods and Goddesses of old have found their ways into our reality, coming back from the “dead” to persist. And with that, I think that’s about the only way to argue that, yes, Thor exists.

edit

So, you might be questioning, how would Goku be able to see on the other side of the television?

It’s my hypothesis as to what a 5th dimensional being would be like. As humans, I posit that we’re 4-dimensional beings: x, y, z, and time. But a 5th dimensional being can go through “versions.” Versions occur throughout time.

A 5th dimensional being can observe the versions. Let’s say reality were to destroy itself and re-create itself many times over. A 5th dimensional being would be able to flip through the versions like a book with pages, each page being a different version of reality, and inject itself into the different versions if so desired. Thus, it could be argued that the 5th dimension is an “alternate reality.”

Thus, a being that can access the 5th dimension or a 5th dimension can access an alternate reality. Goku having FTL technology gives him the maze dilemma, whereby he eventually discovers the 5th dimension or an alternate reality. However, the amount of time for him to accomplish such is infinite or almost infinite rather than instantaneous.

A 4th dimensional being that can use FTL technology would spend infinite or almost infinite time to access an alternate reality. A 5th dimensional being could instantaneously access an alternate reality. Perhaps the Trunks timeline is evidence that Goku played with time-space, or maybe not: I’d have to analyze that more. The Trunks timeline has time-space issues that anyone with time-space knowledge would find odd. Does Buu, nonetheless, kill Trunks? Shouldn’t future Trunks have encountered Buu?  Etc. etc..

The other side of the television would be an alternate reality, our reality:  A 5th dimension to Goku.

edit

And one other thing I’d like to add to this. I have a hypothesis as to how Goku would have obtained FTL technology. It’s based on a hypothesis as how to create a “reasonable person,” which the reasonable person concept is actually somewhat a legal concept. However, I tried to mesh ideas of laws and science together. In law, there is something called “novus actus interveniens,” which means a new act intervening: A new act will intervene and remove an individual’s negligence.

Let’s imagine I create a building with a tunnel. On the outside is a door. After you walk in the door, you live and die a large number of times, maybe infinite. After you die, you come back to life. The only way you’ll get out is by an act of “God.” Thus, eventually, Goku walks out of the door he went in. The question is, “How did that happen?” The answer is “novus actus interveniens,” which means a reasonable person intervened and removed Goku’s negligence. My hypothesis is that the aliens Goku met told him to walk into a 4-dimensional box that he dies in, resets itself, and brings him back to the version he was in when he first walked in: Thus, a system for creating a 5th dimensional being or allowing FTL technology to be learned. It could be argued that Goku became a 5th dimensional being once he learned FTL technology, but that’s debatable.

Imagine something like Kami’s time chamber, except a person spends their life there until they die. And after they die, someone on the outside resets things to the point where the person first went in. If anything were to change inside the time chamber, then it must be outside the control of the person who was resetting the time chamber, thus an intervening act by a being that can access at least 5-dimensional space.

One of my current obscure ideas is that reality has things that deceive us, forms of knowledge that we’re aiming for to achieve. And these things “deceive us,” but if we ourself were to become deceptive, then we would be able to obtain those realms of knowledge. If court is where fantasy meets reality and fantasy is synonymous with illusion, the imaginary, and/or death, then the more times we die, the closer we get to death, which technically is an illusion in a reality where we keep coming back to life: Thus the more we die the more we see the illusions that are in reality, because we ourselves become illusionists.

It’s a speculation.

But let’s go further.

Let’s say I meet a woman named Morgana. She was a cavewoman, typical barbaric woman trying to avoid the sabertooth tiger. But she died… a lot. And as she died more and more, she got closer to death, because she increasingly experienced death. And death could be synonymous with illusion. She never really “died,” because in her reality the universe re-creates itself and she comes back to life in a “block” universe no memory of her former lives. But as she dies more and more, she eventually learns about the illusion of reality surrounding her. And she somehow herself becomes part of the illusion. And with that, she becomes an illusionist. She courted life-and-death so many times, her experiences piled up: Something more reasonable than her intervened to remove her of her negligence and unreasonableness. And she sprung up to be a Goddess.

But those who know lore, you might think to yourself, “How come none of us have seen this Morgana?” And I think the answer goes back to something in my last post: Competing forces nullifying the others influences and existence.

It’s a nice thought, but I’m not sure its realistic.

This post is more about the multiverse. I think the Dragon Ball Z example is good, because it shows someone with a technology that might be able to get someone into our reality. If you can go faster than light and you have infinite time to do something, you might be able to get into this dimension.

The 5th dimension described as “versions” is a good analogy. But I think the term “version” is not adequate. But a 5th-dimensional being or being that can access the 5th-dimension can access parallel objects, objects that don’t touch each other. The individual finds or creates the bridge.

Cube 2: Hypercube is a decent movie if you haven’t watched it. Other 5th-dimensional beings might be observed in the movie Shocker, which is a horror film. Freddy Krueger might be considered a 5th-dimensional being.

On aliens and time travelers

Sometimes I think to myself the following:

If you haven’t seen a time traveler or alien yet, you’re doomed. If no one has seen a time traveler or alien yet, we’re all doomed.

The lack of time travelers and aliens seems to create a significant evidential aspect to further the existential crisis. Part of me wants to ask, “How long would it take a reasonable person to discover alien life?”

Maybe I’ve come across a time traveler. Maybe I’ve come across an alien. And, sure, I probably shouldn’t have been doing some “unethical” things at the time. But I attest that my encountering of them didn’t seem to solve any of the more complex philosophical issues that we humans already deal with. But, I think if I learned something, then it’s that they want to be able to figure out how to break paradoxes, especially the time traveler’s paradox.

With aliens, I think to myself that there may be biological life out there in the cosmos, but it might not be “intelligent.” As a neuroscientist, I well enough understand intelligence to be relative. Thus, my issue is more with whether or not these biological entities can grasp philosophical conundrums, such as the meaning of existence, what is “truth,” and whether or not there can be any feasible objectives to pursue while in existence.

So, with aliens, it could well enough be that there are evolved lifeforms but they aren’t much more communicative than cockroaches, germs, or armadillos. Their life styles don’t require that they look much further than around them rather than above them. Looking back at my education, humans tended to have looked at the sky, questioning the greater aspects of reality and whether or not there was something “out there,” but given that the universe has lifeforms that don’t question, interrogate, or find concerning what is “out there,” there would never have been a necessitate aspect to move beyond their planet.

Sure, it would be interesting for there to be other life forms, but more interesting is if their knowledge of metaphysics and reality has surpassed our own, finding answers to what we find to be philosophical matters that are unsolvable.

No time travelers, no aliens… it seems like no hope. It starts to create evidence of absence, whereby I question if the human race is doomed. Sure, well enough, there might be aliens and time travelers moving around in reality, competing against each other for possession of reality itself. As I once explained to someone, if we could build a time machine and understand reality quite well, more than likely, there would be what I call “the race to zero.”

Imagine you could inject yourself into the beginning of time. All you have to do is move some particles around in the right way, and you’ve completely manipulated time and space and the way reality will unfold. It becomes an issue of control. It might make an individual feel God-like, but not necessarily make someone God. It would, nonetheless, change reality, thus possibly change the futures of societies and cultures from coming into existence. And any aliens or time travelers aware of such a person “wanting” to do such might compete against the individual to “prevent” such from occurring.

So, perhaps there are aliens and time travelers, but they have more important issues to attend to, more important matters that secure their existence in reality.

I think the Fermi paradox is a serious matter. Even if there was other intelligent life, I’m sure they would be considered with issues, such as the existential crisis. They might come across matters of religion. Perhaps it could be posited that God simply wants people to believe whatever they want, thus to find fulfillment in life: But then, one might insist such a philosophy would necessitate free-will.

Personally, I would think if time travelers or aliens existed, they would be concerned with resolving matters of metaphysics and reality.

Some speculations on reality

As of late, people viewing my posts might think that they are unusual, pseudoscience, and whatnot. That’s fine. Feel free to argue against anything I say.

I’m starting to hypothesize various aspects about reality not necessarily being what they are. That’s due to me taking various perspectives of “law” and reality and experimenting with them. In a lot of ways, what has peaked my interest is the concept of “court,” which I consider to be a Platonic form.

Neuroscience meeting law is similar to philosophy meeting law. Where I see the line is between the conscious experience and the funneling of a “moral” system into reality, whereby a moral system is the entrance of some kind of “free will” ideal into a reality where there may or may not be free will. What I’ve found is that I consider “court” to be a concept similar to a Platonic form, so I will set forward a definition of court here:

Court is where fantasy meets reality. To a purist, one might argue that there can be no such thing as fantasy, thus all things are reality. Thus, I can further argue and posit the term “fantasy” and the term “imaginary.”

Fantasy is theoretical, hypothetical, imaginative, untouchable, and yet existing. It’s observed through a glass window to exist but never touchable. It’s tangible aspects are questionable, but it’s observable.

For anyone who has ever studied law, law is like a religion. However, as the same time, it’s something that exists in this reality. And with law, there is a God, which is the reasonable person. I think the bigger aspect of all of this is furthering defining what “court” is: Court is the mind of God.

Nonetheless, there is something I’d like to speculate on. Interestingly, everything that exists outside of court is “hearsay.” Everything that exists outside of it is hearsay. That’s like saying it’s black magic, rumor, etc.. If you look at it, then, every court hearing that has ever existed is fraudulent. By the standards of man, any word that comes out of any person’s mouth is hearsay in the court of law. The word “dog,” it meaning, etc… are all things that come from outside of court.

Court is an illusion. As the mind of God, it knows the truth, the reasonable answer of resolve, and so forth. Nonetheless, it’s deceptive. These are my “scientific” perspectives on Court. Court, nonetheless, has entered itself into reality. It exists as a mechanism of adversarial dispute and resolve. It’s meant to be a truth-seeking mechanism, as science is meant to be a truth-seeking if not a mechanism to discover aspects of reality and describe them to form knowledge.

The significant difference appears to be in objective: One to understand the social fabric of reality, the other to understand the physical fabric of reality. Law vs. science. The entrance of psychologism, however, seems to cause the lines between both to blur if we consider knowledge or what is “truth” to be a psychological consensus occurrence: Mobocratic truth, Kuhnian.

 

 

Culpability, law, psychology, and neuroscience: Forgetting, false memory, mistake of fact, and mistake of law

By: Genecks
Date: December 1st, 2013

Many people are being wrongfully prosecuted, because there is a a lack of consideration of the neurobiology and psychology of individuals being prosecuted.

I have read into law in the past year. Furthermore, I have studied the interplay of culpability in allegations of violations of law. One thing that I keep noticing is that prosecutors tend to lack evidence in relation to a defendant’s state of mind. Furthermore, the defense lacks evidence in relation to a defendant’s state of mind. In other words, there is a lack of ability on both the prosecution and the defense to discuss the state of mind of the defendant. I believe in many ways that comes down to the simple fact that there has been a traditionalist view of exclusing psychologists, psychiatrists, and other professionals who work in relation to mental states from being able to testify in relation to an individual’s state of mind. However, I’ve come to realize that many of these aspects are related to neurobiology, specifically the prefrontal cortex.

Here is an article talking about the prefrontal cortex and law: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0050103

Law, Responsibility, and the Brain

Dean Mobbs mail,

Hakwan C Lau,
Owen D Jones,
Christopher D Frith

Published: Apr 17, 2007
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0050103

What I have also read in relation to the prefrontal cortex, is that it also relates to cognitive empathy, memory, recall, and semantics.

First, I will talk about mistake of law:

For instance, in WILLIAM CHAVERS vs. STATE OF INDIANA (No. 49A04-1211-CR-580) the defendant had made a mistake of fact. However, in a lot of ways, there was a mistake of law made by William Chavers. One of the things that the government likes to do is say “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.” However, be that an individual was ignorant, it acts as the reason an individual did something. Law likes to work and think in terms of “excuses.” However, from a deterministic perspective, excuses are synonymous with the word “reason.”

In William Chavers vs. State of Indiana, a court order was placed on William Chavers in Court 21, which was later dismissed. William Chavers was made aware of this, because he was at the Court 21 hearing. Later, during a different hearing in a different court, William Chavers had a court order placed on him by Court 16. Allegedly, Kerr
reminded Chavers of all the conditions of his probation, including the no contact order from Court 16. However, Chavers had contact and conversations with Cushenberry, who indicated to Chavers that she had the dismissal paper and that Chavers could come to her home.

Now, here is the issue: Did William Chavers have knowledge at the time of talking to his Cushenberry that there was a protective order on him by Court 16?

Well, a person might argue that he did, because allegedly the probation officer said that he gave Chavers information that there was an order against him in reference to Court 16.

However, human memory is malleable: People forget things. For instance, people forget numbers. People forget telephone numbers. He may have mixed up the numbers 16 and 21 when thinking about Court 16 and Court 21. I sure did while writing this. However, a person does not generally forget he or she has a court order against him or her. Furthermore, there was no evidence presented, for what I’ve read of the July 16, 2013 appeal, that the probation officer gave Chavers the information about the Court 16 court order. As far as I know, it was based on the probation officer’s word alone.

A day or so later, on September 20, 2012, Chavers met with Andrew Kerr (“Kerr”), a probation officer, and was oriented as to the terms of his probation. Kerr
reminded Chavers of all the conditions of his probation, including the no contact order from Court 16.

However, during sometime around all of this…

On or about September 18 or 19, 2012, Cushenberry went to Court 21 and asked that the protective order be removed. Cushenberry was given paperwork indicating that
the civil protective order had been dismissed at the September 10 hearing. Cushenberry did not go to Court 16 to request that the no contact order issued as a condition of
Chavers’s probation be vacated.

Was Cushenberry aware that there was a court 16 court order against Chavers?

If there is no evidence to suggest that Cushenberry did know about this, then there will be evidence of abscence: She will not be seen on camera, there will be no digital footprint of her being aware, and so on.

Now, there was an aspect to this case, which was that Cushenberry allegedly had told Chavers that there was no court order against him. However, Cushenberry mentioned that she had dismissed the restraining order:

Later that same day, on September 20, Chavers had contact and conversations with Cushenberry, who indicated to Chavers that she had the dismissal paper and that Chavers could come to her home.

At this point, an individual can use Occam’s razor:

(1) Chavers’ willingness to go to Cushenberry’s home means that he lacked knowledge about the Court 16 order being in effect: Chavers was ignorant
(2) Chavers is a gullible person and believed that Cushenberry got rid of the Court 16 order, despite having knowledge that it was in effect as said by Kerr: Chavers was reckless
(3) Chavers was well aware that the Court 16 order was in effect and knowingly broke the terms: Chavers was knowing

Now, we’re getting into “mental states.”

Hypothesis 1:

However, Chavers had been informed by Kerr at his probation appointment earlier on the day of his arrest that the no contact order was still in effect, and Kerr believed there was no confusion about the order when they met.

Why did Kerr believe that? Did Kerr have overconfidence in his ability to communicate information?
And what about Chavers? Did Chavers pay attention to what Kerr was saying?

Did Chavers state in court that during the time he was talking to Cushenberry on the telephone that he was aware that the Court 16 order was in effect?

If he was not aware that it was in effect, then he unknowingly broke the order.

But how could he not be aware?

That’s a good question. You see, sometimes people don’t remember everything they are told all at once. Sometimes people lack an ability to generate episodic memories in relation to information that they are encountering. Sometimes people pay attention as much as they can, and then they lack the ability to absorb all the information. In a sense, it’s like ADHD: A failure to pay attention well enough and remember all of the information the person is encountering. However, there is the aspect that the individual was at the court 16 hearing and told about the court order: Did Chavers recall that?

And how do you prove that Chavers was not aware of the court 16 order?

That’s easy enough: Prove that he is a forgetful person, and be able to prove how forgetful of a person he is.

If Chavers was not aware of the court 16 order while talking to Cushenberry, then Chavers had a false memory.

I read parts of the book

    Proving the Unprovable: The Role of Law, Science, and Speculation in Adjudicating Culpability and Dangerousness

(American Psychology-Law Society).

It talks about how law likes to reject the notions of psychology and science. I believe that law appeals to ignorance in attempt to remove itself from notions of determinism in order to force a free-will standpoint onto individuals.

In relation to Chavers awareness of the court order, it was mentioned that Chavers…

Instead, he relied only on Cushenberry’s assertion that the order had been vacated. However, Chavers had been informed by Kerr at his probation appointment earlier on the day of his arrest that the no contact order was still in effect, and Kerr believed there was no confusion about the order when they met.

NO WHERE IN THE APPEAL DID IT STATE THAT CHAVERS WAS AWARE OF THE COURT 16 ORDER.

That means either Chavers was unaware or was at least reckless as to coming over to Cushenberry’s home.

There is an assumption, however, by the court: “Therefore, Chavers had received conflicting information regarding the validity of the no contact order.”

That is an assumption. At no time was it discussed that Chavers was consciouly aware while talking to Cushenberry that the court 16 order was against him.

In the face of such conflicting information, a reasonable person would attempt to verify the validity of the order, by looking at the dismissal papers personally, or by contacting the clerk of the issuing court. This is especially true of a man who had just been convicted and sentenced for D felony criminal confinement. Chavers failed to take any such action.

The court assumed that there was conflicting information. The court assumed that Chavers was reckless. The court assumed that Chavers failed to act as a reasonable person. However, people forget. The reasonable person is a hypothetical person. There is no scientific standard. I assume that a scientific standard could be applied if you had MRI brain scans of all people who were in a similar position as to him, but the court did not have such evidence to support the allegation that he failed to act as a reasonable person. There was no evidence provided that he acted unreasonable for a “a man who had just been convicted and sentenced for D felony criminal confinement. Chavers failed to take any such action.”

Chavers states that he relied, in a manner he believed to be reasonable, on Cushenberry’s statement that she had gone to court and that the order had been vacated at her request. He argues that he could and did reasonably believe that the Court 16 order was vacated, and that his presence at Cushenberry’s home was not a knowing violation of the no contact order, but rather a mistaken belief that the order was no longer in effect. He argues that this belief constitutes a mistake of fact that negates the element of knowledge requisite for commission of the offense of invasion of privacy.

Thus, we start to see that Chavers states that he relied on what Cushenberry had to say. However, was he confabulating? And if he was not confabulating, then was he reckless? He states that he relied on what Cushenberry had to say. However, there does not seem to be any evidence in relation to him having been consciously aware at the time he was talking to Cushenberry that that the Court 16 order was in effect against him: Thus, that leads to the question of whether or not he was confabulating in court.

Further, even if Chavers’s reliance was reasonable when he arrived at Cushenberry’s home, he had already been in contact with Cushenberry before she indicated to him that the order was vacated, in violation of the order.

There is no proof that Cushenberry knew about the Court 16 order. There is no proof that Chavers knew that Cushenberry knew about the Court 21 order dismissal. As far as Chavers knew, the Court 21 hearing was dismissed. During the telephone conversation, Chavers would have known that the Court 21 case was dismissed, and he would have been able to recognize that Cushenberry knew that the Court 21 hearing was dismissed. However, if there is no evidence that Cushenberry knew that the Court 16 order was in effect and there is evidence that Chavers was consciously aware of the Court 16 order being in effect, then Chavers misled Cushenberry. However, there was a failure to establish that Chavers was consciously aware of the Court 16 order being in effect during the time he spoke to Cushenberry. If he was consciously aware of the Court 16 order being in effect, then he was knowingly breaking it while talking to Cushenberry on the telephone, I assume. And then he was consciously aware of being in violation of it when he came over to Cushenberry’s home.

However, Chavers could not testify that he heard Cushenberry say that she vacated the Court 16 order, because Cushenberry never went to the court hearing for the Court 16 order. Furthermore, as there would be evidence that Cushenberry had went to vacate the Court 21 order, she would know that she did not vacate the order. If there is no evidence to suggest that Cushenberry knew about the Court 16 order being in effect (via evidence of absence), then there is no way it could be argued that she told Chavers over the telephone before he came over that she vacated the Court 16 order. Therefore, Chavers was confabulating about the telephone conversation with Cushenberry.

How to read an IR spectrum

Author: Genecks

One of the things I have been meaning to write about is how I have gone about reading an IR spectrum. I think that many people hold confusion when it comes about reading IR spectra. However, it can be broken down into simple methods and steps. I will not go into detail, but I will provide some basics of how I go about reading an IR spectra. As I have not done it in a long time, I will give some advice that I think any person reading an IR spectra can use in order to help keep the methodology understood.

One of the first things to keep in mind is that certain bonds occur about certain wavelengths. As such, a person has to keep a memory of what bonds occur at what wavelengths. Nonetheless, it can still be problematic to scan about an IR spectra in attempting to assign bonds and develop an understanding of what kind of molecule an individual is looking at.

As such, I think the way I entertain reading an IR spectra is to use a left to right methodology. I think, for the most part, an IR spectra goes from general to specific as you move from left to right while reading an IR spectra. So, if you’re looking at the left-most part of an IR spectra, there are not as many bonds to interpret to exist as there would be as you move more to the right while viewing the peaks and curves of an IR spectra. As you move more toward the right of the IR spectra, you start to realize that there are more specific kinds of bonds that can occur.

So, it can be boiled down to a few basic principles:

1) Left to right processing of visual information to determine the bonds

2) Memorization of the bonds that occur from left to right that may exist within particular wavelength regions while reading an IR spectra from left to right

Once a person can generalize and understand what kind of bonds an individual is coming across while interpreting the peaks on an IR spectrum, and individual can attempt to analyze the fingerprint region on an IR spectrum. For a person who becomes more proficient at interpreting a fingerprint region on an IR spectrum, there becomes a level of ease during which an individual can more easily interpret the IR spectrum. In my experience, the fingerprint region can be intimidating, but it can offer clues as to what kind of molecule a person is looking at.

So, in a way, moving from left to right while analyzing the IR spectrum means analyzing from general to specific.