User:Tastyummy
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There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -Francis Bacon
Beauty is only possible in imperfection. -Me
[edit] Exceptional Newcomer
[edit] The Barnstar of High Culture
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The Barnstar of High Culture | |
| Max18well 21:57, 18 August 2006 (UTC) -- awarded me by my friend Max, during his defense of my article on indeterminacy in philosophy. |
[edit] Brights Movement
[edit] Miscellaneous information about this user
| A | This user is a member of WikiProject Atheism |
Please feel free to email me at tastyummy@hotmail.com for any good reason (you be the judge!).
My name is Alex Olsen and I live in Tallahassee, Florida.
I'm relatively inexperienced at writing and editing Wikipedia articles, but I love Wikipedia and have relied on it almost constantly for (relatively) neutral and up-to-date information on a great variety of subjects since my first visit to the site. I'm not new to writing or editing in general; I scored a perfect 800 on the writing section of the old SAT, and my scores on the writing and critical reading sections of the new SAT were perfect as well. Unfortunately, I can offer no other credentials, as I am currently only in my freshman year at Florida State University. But an argument from authority is never a sound argument anyway; it is presented here only in defense of my own corrections of various grammatical errors, since they've been attacked in the past in various, in sundry, and, above all, largely in unproductive ways.
I intend to (finally) contribute to Wikipedia by doing as many minor edits for grammar, usage, and the like as I possibly and practically can, as well as by writing new articles on the few subjects I know well, and, probably more rarely, doing larger edits of articles that need them. I appreciate any comments on, or criticism of, my work on my user talk page; as I say, I love Wikipedia and the last thing I want to do is screw it up.
Some people call me an arrogant dick. I would respond that, like any rational person, I believe that I am right about something until I am shown to be wrong via a logical argument or some other direct evidence against my position. There is a difference between arrogance and correctness, and I am always willing to admit that I am wrong about anything if, and only if, there is evidence for my being wrong about it.
I am a firm atheist and a bright, since I do not believe in any supernatural thing whatsoever. I am more than willing to debate these subjects with anyone who is interested. The phenomena of religion, faith, et cetera are currently best explained by memetics or, in philosophy, by an historical treatment of ideas, concepts, etc, i.e., by an inquiry into their origins. Given any precise definition of God, I can and will prove via either scientific evidence or direct logical argument that he, she, or it does not exist (or, alternately, if God is defined as something clearly perceptible, like "this apple I'm holding in my hand", I will show that it needn't be worshipped, and that since it isn't an object of faith, it needn't be called "God" to begin with; I will similarly show that anything of indeterminate definition, e.g., "that which you cannot disprove", or "the entire universe", doesn't demand any more worship than anything else). I firmly believe that church and state should be entirely separate-- meaning that no religious organization should be allowed a tax-exempt status unless I can personally found such a tax-exempt "religion" in my apartment with only me as a member; any other policy necessarily constitutes favoritism toward certain religions, or against a lack thereof, in government, which is a clear breach of our constitution.
I live in the United States of America, in Florida, where the vote doesn't matter. I share my modest apartment with a population of roaches who seem to really love it here.
I am not affiliated with any major political party (or, indeed, any political party at all); although I consider myself personally to be a libertarian at least in principle, I intend to vote for the Democratic candidate in the next Presidential election because there is an actual chance he or she will win. I do not support my country's backing of Israel's rampant war criminality or its invasion of any country, and I never have.
I am a musician and, more specifically, a composer who uses computer software to create music. The following is a sample of my musical work; I used computer software to write and synthesize it a couple of years ago. I hereby release it publicly for any and all use as long as I, Alex Olsen, am cited as its composer during such use: [just a little song I wrote.]
[edit] An Experiment with Madness
I recently ended a three-year experiment during which I tried to become "insane". My goal was to produce controlled hallucinations, i.e., things that were utterly real to me whether or not they were real to anyone else, but which I myself could create and whose behaviour I could determine. I have concluded that this is impossible.
I attempted to convince myself that I had a fiancee, Lila, who lived in St. Petersburg with our daughter Laura Elektra, and whom I loved more than anything and everything. In effect, I tried to become a modern Pygmalion. I am about to begin to write a book which will include, among various philosophical critiques, a full account of this experience.
If anyone else has ever tried to create a lover out of thin air, and remained devoted to this for a similar (or greater) length of time, I implore him or (preferably) her to contact me privately at my personal e-mail address, tastyummy @ hotmail . com (with spaces removed), with an e-mail with subject line "pygmalion" or something similar. I feel completely alone in what I have done. (Perhaps I am; I hope that I am not.)
This page will see major updates soon; I only ended this experiment one week ago and I am still trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.
[edit] Philosophy, mathematics, science, et cetera
Per above, this section will see major updates soon as I am about to begin to write a book which will include various critiques of various philosophers, some alternatives to their errors (hopefully!), and the story of my unsuccessful attempt to become mad. The section below is somewhat dated, but roughly reflective of my current views, so I'll leave it for now, since it is currently three forty-five in the morning where I'm sitting and I am tired.
I am a long-time student of philosophy and, more importantly, I live by it and am addicted to debate; I'm not as widely-read as I wish I were, but I've read most of Nietzsche's work many times and consider myself to be quite well-informed on his views, although my own views are not purely Nietzschean. I have also studied several works by Freud, and some by Schopenhauer, Kant, Sartre, Camus, and various other (mostly continental) philosophers, as well as most of the standard old-Greek favorites; I also read philosophy-related articles on Wikipedia whenever original writings are unavailable to me (i.e., regularly). I have been told that my own work seems similar to Foucault's, although I have only very recently begun to read his, so I can't call myself Foucaultian either.
I am especially impressed with some of Nietzsche's assertions' precursion of various aspects of the scientific method: for example, Nietzsche's assertion, "that a theory is refutable is, frankly, not the least of its charms: this is precisely how it attracts the more refined intellects" (from Beyond Good and Evil, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy edition) approximates Karl Popper's view that a theory is scientific to the extent that it is falsifiable.
In what I am now very glad to call the past, my work focused on ethical and existential philosophy with an emphasis on the problems of nihilism and suicidality. I next worked on ontology, linguistic systems, and indeterminacy as they relate to the philosophy of consciousness. Currently, I am studying biology and memes, and I am particularly interested in the work of Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett at the moment. I have also just begun reading Derrida: my goal is to determine whether his work relies upon anything noumenal; if it does not, then I will probably agree with much of it, as I've been told my own critical technique resembles Derrida's (I was even called a "deconstructionist" before I had ever heard of deconstruction), but if it is mere phenomenology, then I'll end up trashing it for philosophical reasons (but not merely because respected scientists deride it; the arguments I've seen against it thus far have been either obviously fallacious or necessarily beyond the comprehension of one unfamiliar with the work being discussed.) My eventual goal is to study precisely how various genes produce various aspects of human language (and, by extension, of the human mind in general), and, specifically, to learn about the genetic origin of the indeterminacy of definition and the replication of memes. I have also recently taken an interest in set theory, and particularly in the fact that it seems to me that the "empty set" can be eliminated by Occam's Razor from any model of any real phenomenon: in this way, it seems to me to be similar to Kant's "thing in itself". The empty set and the difference between elements and subsets are fundamental to set theory and its axioms, but I cannot consider them as "fundamental to reality", or even to a particular model of some real phenomenon, until they have been demonstrated to me as such fundaments. I am trying on my own to find such a model: just as I was more ready to accept the idea that i squared is -1 when I was told that its use was necessary in electronics-- an empirical science-- and have also seen that its use is necessary to the production of, for example, fractal art, I would quickly accept the necessity of the empty set, and of the difference between membership in a given set and being a subset of it, if I could see that these ideas were necessary to a working explanation or model of some observable process, or to that process itself (as, for example, the number i is necessary to the creation of fractal art), other than our own mere supposition of their existence.
And for all you Platonistic mathematicians out there, I'll offer a couple of fellow mathematicians' views on what has been called the "objectivity", "immediate certainty", or "self-evidence" of mathematical truth:
- "Mathematics is the most exact science, and its conclusions are capable of absolute proof. But this is only because mathematics does not attempt to draw absolute conclusions. All mathematical truths are relative, conditional." - Charles Proteus Steinmetz
- "Strange as it may sound, the power of mathematics rests on its evasion of all unnecessary thought [...]" - Ernst Mach
And in my current opinion the notion, for example, that membership in a given set is fundamentally different from being a subset of it is one such "unnecessary thought".
I also study psychopharmacology and drug-based psychotherapy, and particularly (but not exclusively) psychotomimetics, antidepressants, and some "recreational" drugs, both academically and via personal use. I'm probably an addict (I am prescribed certain drugs that I'll supposedly likely never be able to quit, but am not addicted to anything illegal), but I'm certainly not a "dope fiend", as the late Hunter S. Thompson might have put it, and I began my study of these often-useful drugs years before I began to use any of them out of curiosity, and came to enjoy using the ones that I do later still. I am, more importantly, well-versed in psychology and psychotherapy; I've studied both for nearly as long as I've studied philosophy and worked for several months as an intern at a local mental hospital. My conclusion: psychiatry is utter bullshit as a "scientific" or even a "medical" field. The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock the insane up. (Psychology, on the other hand, isn't bullshit insofar as it is scientific.)
The above statement about drug use is, of course, a work of utter fiction; I have never actually used any illegal substances; I simply enjoy writing things like this for reasons you will never understand. And, please, whatever your position on that issue, don't assume anything about my other, largely unrelated, philosophical positions because of it.
[edit] Anti-Psychiatry
As is obviously evidenced above, I am a proponent of various aspects of "the anti-psychiatry movement". That a society invents various "disorders" of the mind evidences its faith in (that is, its invention of) a fundamental "order" of the mind-- in other words, its assumption of the existence of an ideal mind in the Platonic sense-- and Plato's Ideas were reduced to the unknowable noumenon by Kant, which in turn was shown not to be possible by Nietzsche and, more importantly, which, along with Platonic ideas in general, can never be shown to exist independently of the "phenomenon" via scientific experimentation.
"Mental health" is an indeterminate, unquantifiable, and utterly unscientific concept. From the Wikipedia article on health:
- "One widely accepted definition of health is that of the World Health Organization 'WHO'. It states that 'health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity' (WHO, 1946). In more recent years, this statement has been modified to include the ability to lead a "socially and economically productive life."
In the view expressed above, who is to judge precisely what characteristics indicate "mental and social well-being" or social or economic productivity? Presumably, in a society whose members cannot legally practice medicine without accepting the views of various institutions, the Judges would be the healthiest, or at least those who "know" the most about this kind of "health"! To accept such a view is to accept the superiority of the non-scientific opinions of the psychiatrist regarding what is "good", what "well-being" is, and what activities are "productive" over your own views in seeking "medical treatment" for a "mental disorder".
Think for yourself about such things! How can science ever demonstrate which things are necessarily good? A thing's "goodness" is interchangeable with your own preference of it: or, alternately, an activity that is "pleasurable", "good", or something like one of these, is an activity that you would like to repeat, or to spread to others, or in whose frequency of occurrence you would like to see an increase. Nothing whatsoever is "good in itself"; things are good because we like them-- and this does not devalue them in any way!
I can, mostly (but not completely) confidently, assert that "Health" is distance in a causal chain from death. If some given event, such as having recently been shot in the chest, makes a given person more likely to die in the near future than he or she would have been had that event not occurred, then he or she is in poorer health than is a person who hasn't been shot. Similarly, a person with a terminal and incurable illness is in poorer health than is a person with, say, a common cold. But what can "mental death" ever be, scientifically, other than brain-death? And the "severely mentally-ill" aren't brain-dead: they perform complex actions, they often can speak (and often quite intelligibly), et cetera: and we don't consider persons with severe brain damage who cannot perform complex actions, like Terri Schiavo, to be "insane" anyway!
The common concept of insanity stems, in my opinion, from our failure to empathise with those who differ from us in what we consider to be fundamental ways: we consider the causes of their behaviours as indeterminate. Consider the pedophile: most people simply cannot relate to his sexual preferences because they cannot conceive of any rational cause of such preferences: but insofar as we simply confine those with whom we do not empathise, we fail to study the origin of their offending behaviours! How can a society address a problem like pedophilia without identifying its origin? We can exterminate, castrate, incarcerate, and otherwise annihilate identified pedophiles: but this is like cutting only the top off of a weed that will continue to grow from the roots that we leave behind, or like taking your child to the dentist to keep his or her teeth in good condition without ever teaching your child to brush his or her teeth! To respond to "insanity" with confinement, whether it be physical confinement in a cell or confinement to a set of "acceptable" or "healthy" behaviours via the use of antipsychotics, is to fail to learn about the behaviours that characterise "insanity" and their origins.
[edit] On the falsity of the dichotomy between mental and physical phenomena
That "mental well-being" or "mental health" are considered as fundamentally different from "physical health" implies a dichotomy between the mental and the physical: such dichotomy is exemplified in the proposition of the hard problem of consciousness and in the supposed "fundamentality" of the "existence" of qualia, noumena, Platonic ideas, et cetera. This is a false dichotomy. It has plagued Western society since Plato, and it continues to plague us today, despite the valiant efforts of a minority of real skeptics, like Nietzsche, Foucault, and Dennett to demonstrate to the public not only its falsity but its clear harmfulness to human beings. Whenever scientists or philosophers devote their time to "proving" the "existence" of "purely-mental" phenomena, they waste that time. The mind that can "comprehend" the "perceptibility" of qualia can, once it comprehends the refutation of their "purely-mental" existence, comprehend a theory that addresses them only as physical phenomena. Philosophy's disproof of its own wrong conclusions can, in other words, lead to a scientific worldview, and for this it is valuable indeed: but philosophers like David Chalmers ought to be considered as living anachronisms in an age that calls itself an age of reason. Nietzsche saw this in the nineteenth century, and Dennett has affirmed it in our own age, and yet even now, in the twenty-first century, in a student psychology textbook, copyright 2007[sic], entitled Biological Psychology, its author, a Ph.D. in psychology, James W. Kalat, saw fit to include in his chapter on "The Major Issues"-- (presumably, those relevant to biological psychology)-- that
- "David Chalmers (1995) has proposed that in discussions of consciousness we distinguish between what he calls the easy problems and the hard problem. [...] [T]he hard problem concerns why and how any kind of brain activity is associated with consciousness. [...] That is, why does brain activity feel like anything at all? Many scientists (Crick and Koch, 2004) and philosophers agree that we have no way to answer that question, at least at present."
At least he adds in a footnote that
- "[...] According to the identity position, brain activity does not cause or lead to consciousness any more than consciousness leads to brain activity. Each is the same as the other."
But he doesn't mention, for example, Dennett, who has directed much of his work specifically toward "solving" the "hard problem" of consciousness, and who is an eminent modern philosopher who would almost certainly agree with his "identity position". My problem is not that people with whom I disagree, like Chalmers, are discussed here. I think that this is a good thing: but there's very little information in this chapter of the text on the specificities of the "identity position" taken by modern biological psychology in general, and quite a lot on erroneous philosophical views surrounding it. Of course, the remainder of the text is devoted to current scientific theory (or so, at least, I presume from its title; I am currently enrolled in a class which uses that text-- and, conveniently, we were told to skip the first chapter--), but, as I say, a philosopher who is a proponent of the "identity position" isn't mentioned, unless I've misread the text.
As long as this dualism between the mental/spiritual/etc. and the physical/material/etc. is present in modern thought, we will not answer the "hard problem" of consciousness as a society. Qualia are just as fundamental to such a view as the noumenon is to Kant's extension of Platonism. It is, in fact, itself an extension of Platonism.
[edit] Other miscellany and possibly some arrogant, pretentious, self-important dickhood
I either wrote, rewrote, or very heavily modified the articles for Indeterminacy (Philosophy), hyle, hylopathism, panpsychism, qualia, noumenon, and, funnily enough, body load and 2C-E, although these last two have little, if anything, to do with philosophy.
I have tried to popularize and improve the Wikipedia among philosophers by updating articles to reflect the most current arguments on the most current subjects, and I am continuing to do so as I continue to learn about the world.
The following reflects (or at least I hope it does) my success in popularizing philosophy and Wikipedia in general:
--My Articles' Popularity on Google (these are articles that I either wrote in their entirety or heavily modified)-- -as of 19 August 2006 (some extra terms used to increase relevance):
Body load: 6th of 71,800,000 (I wrote every word)
Hyle: 7th of 389,000 (heavily modified) (everything but the first and last couple of sentences is mine)
Hylopathism: 1st of 2,680 (mine)
Indeterminacy in philosophy: 1st of 441,000 (mine in its entirety as of right now)
Thing in itself (also used search term "criticism": 1st of 38,600,000 (all criticisms but Schopenhauer's written by yours truly)
Qualia (also used search term "criticism"): 1st of 74,200 ("other criticisms" section mine)
2C-E: 3rd of 949,000 ("effects" section very heavily modified by me)
