< Back Laura Cabrera Contributor Laura Cabrera's interests focus on the ethical and societal implications of neurotechnology and neuroscientific advances. She has been working on projects that explore the media coverage and the attitudes of the general public toward pharmacological and novel neurosurgical interventions for the treatment of psychiatric disorders. She has also worked on the public perceptions towards the use of different modalities of neuromodifiers for enhancement purposes, as well as their normative implications. Her current work also focuses on the responsible governance of neurotechnology. Neurotech Challenges Mental Privacy: New Human Rights?

< Back AI for Healthcare “Boka, is it true you used to drive 10 miles to see a doctor once a year and called that healthcare?” David Cowles A recent article posted online quoted a health plan executive as saying, “Solving consumer engagement is worth $1 trillion to our organization.” Considering that the market cap of the largest health plan today (UHC) is less than half that, this is obviously a bit of an exaggeration. But only a bit! There is no doubt that consumer engagement is healthcare’s Holy Grail. Since the collapse of ‘strong form’ Managed Care in the mid-1990s, Engaging the Consumer has been Job One for healthcare providers and benefit plan managers alike. We’ve tried cost shifting (high deductibles), Consumer Directed Health Care (HRAs & HSAs), health fairs, financial incentives for lifestyle management, urgent care and walk-in clinics, telemedicine, no cost preventive care, consumer education, and finally, computer assisted customer service. None has made the slightest dent in the titanium dome of consumer apathy! Two exceptions : Doctor Google and boutique pharmaceuticals. We do love our pharmaceuticals! We can’t wait to try the latest $300/dose drug that TV promises will give us marital bliss, obedient children, career success, limitless leisure, and a ‘scratch’ golf game. Plus, we never tire of entering our symptoms into various databases and then wringing our hands gleefully upon receiving their mechanically generated diagnoses. It’s a roller coaster ride for those who don’t go to amusement parks. It is said that the definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over again while expecting a different outcome each time. That’s us! We’ve poured billions of dollars into consumer engagement initiatives over the last 30 years…and we’ve come up empty. My mother-in-law (RIP) used to say, “If you have your health, you have everything!” Americans don’t necessarily agree. We will invest great wealth into exercise equipment, gym memberships, vitamin therapies, fad diets, etc., but we are reluctant to spend a single hour or a single dollar on traditional medicine. Yet it is still the case, rightly or wrongly, that traditional medicine accounts for about 90% of our nation’s healthcare spending. Folks today want to shop for healthcare like they do electronics, IRT. They want all the information there is, neatly summarized by a ‘Consumer Reports’ Bot. We want to know the differential diagnoses, treatment options, prognoses, and risks, all in one shot. At the same time, we want our healthcare to be ‘bespoke’. We want to be able to tweak our data, play ‘what if’. We want a ‘one size fits one’ health strategy. In a phrase, we want Virtual Concierge Medicine (‘VCM’ – just what we don’t need…a new acronym to learn). On the supply side, we have an acute shortage of physicians, nurses, and healthcare professionals, especially at the primary care level. What providers we do have suffer from burn out. The combination of medical advances, patient flow, regulatory mandates, and burdensome paperwork is simply unsupportable. As a result, healthcare organizations on average turn over 100% of their staff every 5 years. If only a technology existed that could deliver features consumers want while reducing providers’ workload! We might hope that such a technology would engage patients, improve overall population health, and ameliorate quality of life for healthcare professionals; we might hope it would reduce, or at least cap, the per patient cost of healthcare while allowing us to increase compensation for providers, especially those near the base of the economic pyramid (e.g., first responders, nurses, primary care physicians). If only there was such a thing as ‘Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare’… Now, here is where you expect me to say, “Introducing Health Bot 101”; sorry to disappoint! Sure, there are a number of ‘AI for Healthcare’ platforms in development right now, but early indications are that they won’t go nearly far enough to make any difference at all . (How’s that for a prognosis!) Consider ‘Hippocratic AI’ for example. This platform advertises itself as the first ‘safety-focused’ AI for Healthcare. Not surprisingly, they have adopted the ancient Greek motto (4 th century BCE), “First do no harm,” which translates into modern English as, “Above all, don’t get sued." For all its initial hype and promise, Hippocratic has apparently surrendered even before it’s been launched. The site has decided that it will not suggest possible diagnoses . May I pose a question? What good is any healthcare resource if it doesn’t diagnose? Did you just say, “Pick on someone your own size!” Admittedly, Hippocratic AI is a start-up. So how about Google? Big enough for you? Google’s AI for Healthcare initiative grades its product(s) according to 4 measures: How closely do AI’s answers reflect medical consensus? Are AI’s answers free of bias? How precise are AI’s answers? Do any of AI’s answers risk harming the patient? As we’ll see below, Google’s application is not AI, it’s Anti-AI. Ok, it is ‘artificial’ but it’s not ‘intelligent’. All it’s doing is rearranging symbols within a very tight set of parameters. That is not the promise of AI. We need AI to discover and label new maladies, to model novel treatments and cures and test them virtually, to invent new treatment protocols, to envision new surgical techniques, to propose proper genetic intervention when appropriate, etc. In short, we need AI to go where no physician has gone before. Let’s see how this vision fares under Google’s 4 tests: Sometimes consensus is a good thing; sometimes it’s not! Apparently, the Sun does not revolve around the Earth after all. We want doctors who’ve kept current, but we also want doctors who aren’t afraid to go against the tide when appropriate. Apparently, Google doesn’t agree. Bias is bad, we can all agree on that, but sometimes one person’s ‘bias’ is another person’s ‘fair and balanced’ – and vice versa, of course. The risk is that the arbiter of ‘bias’ will be…‘biased’! What doesn’t belong and why? ‘Precise’ doesn’t seem to fit here, does it? Of course, we want our answers to be as ‘precise’ as possible, but precisely what does that mean? Accurate? Detailed? Narrow? Litigation immune? What are Google’s ‘precision’ criteria? Finally, ‘Don’t harm the patient!’ Come on now, who could possibly have a problem with that ? Well, me for one! “ALL healthcare involves risk!” How many times have you heard that from your favorite characters on your favorite (pre-strike) TV medical dramas? But we don’t believe it, do we? We live in the age of warranties and product liability. We want our results guaranteed! Not happening! No healthcare regime will ever be able to deliver that level of assurance. By its very nature, healthcare is a ‘risk/reward’ proposition. If I treat diagnosis X with therapy Y, how likely is it that I will be helped (and by how much)? How likely is it that I will be hurt (and by how much)? Come to think of it, we apply this same thought process every time we make a decision. Should I steal this cookie? Should I rob this bank? Should I get married (or divorced)? Should I jump out of an airplane? Should I go ‘all in’ on this hand? I’m standing at the craps table at Bellagio. I’ve noticed that in the warp and woof of the game, it’s reached a point where I have $400 on the felt, spread among various numbers. Should I let it ride or pull it down? If I let it ride, I could walk away with $800…or more; plus I would be able to tell all my friends, “I beat Bellagio”. That’s worth something, right? On the other hand, I could easily lose all $400 on a single roll. So my decision comes down to this: just how badly do I need that $400? Why should healthcare be any different? The Fact is, it can’t be! We just pretend that it is. So, it looks as though the ‘AI Revolution’ in healthcare may be over before it began, but it doesn’t have to end this way! When self-driving vehicles were first introduced, people were horrified… me among them. No human being at the controls? Nope, no one to fall asleep at the wheel, drink and drive, text while moving, etc. What a disaster that would be! Now I can say with confidence: self-driving vehicles are coming soon to a neighborhood near you… if they’re not already pulling into your driveway… and I can’t wait! Sure, self-driving vehicles pose some risks. We’re doing the best we can to minimize those risks, but we’ll never eliminate them entirely. The question is, “How do the risks posed by self-driving vehicles compare with the risks of human-driven cars?” Now apply that to healthcare: 30% of all healthcare delivered in the United States is either ineffective or harmful; almost 20% of patients are misdiagnosed. Could a Bot do any worse? Still, who can argue with Hippocratic’s ‘safety first’ focus? We all want patients protected from incorrect diagnoses and ineffective or harmful treatments; we all want patients’ PHI (Personal Health Information) kept confidential. Nevertheless, this is a huge climb down from Hippocratic’s initial commitment to ‘always-on triage’. Beyond that, though, it is puzzling that an AI program would make safety its #1 priority. What about functionality? Shouldn’t we be looking to develop AI that works and protects, rather than AI that protects and may have some functionality as well? As a society, we need to recognize the fact that safety and functionality are often at cross purposes; we must make sober, adult, and may I say ‘non-ideological’, decisions about which strategy is best in what circumstances. Take, for example, HIPPA. It was intended to protect patients’ PHI without increasing the cost or compromising the quality of care; it has failed. Oh, don’t get me wrong: it’s done a marvelous job of securing personal data. But the cost of compliance has been massive and felt all along the supply chain, even to the level of the lone MD with her totemic ‘black bag’. More importantly, HIPPA has eroded the quality of patient care. It takes a village to treat a tumor! Optimal outcomes often require input from diverse stakeholders. But such input is only possible if relevant patient information is shared, and that sharing is precisely what HIPPA regulates . (Notice I said, “regulates”, not “prohibits”… or even “restricts”.) So, the fault does not lie with HIPPA! The law is careful to include a number of well-considered exceptions to its ‘data lockdown’. The problem comes at the application level. Healthcare professionals, by and large, do not understand the nuances of the law; why should they? They’re ‘doctors and nurses and such’ (Willie Nelson). Rather than risk Draconian fines or unpredictable litigation, many have adopted a ‘see no data, hear no data, share no data’ approach to patient care. That is neither what HIPAA intended, nor what it requires, but it is how it is being interpreted and administered on our mean streets . At one time, even my own doctor was refusing to respond to texts and emails “because of HIPPA”. Let’s compare the potential results of AI delivered healthcare vs. healthcare delivered by old reliable, Homo sapiens (HS). First HS : I go to my doctor and my blood pressure (BP) is a bit high; my doctor recommends some lifestyle changes and a particular medication. I return in 3 months to have my BP rechecked; still high. Did I follow the doc’s lifestyle instructions? Did I take my medication religiously? Ok, let’s try a new med and check again 90 days out. 6 months have gone by now and there’s still no guarantee that my BP is under control. Now AI : Again, upon initial examination, my BP is elevated. My PCP hands me a blood pressure monitoring device to use at home, but then he turns all my future healthcare over to an AI Bot named Charley. Chas, as I call him, tells me to cut way back on my sodium in-take for 2 weeks to see if that has any impact; it doesn’t. Ok, am I willing to cut down on alcohol and switch to decaf? Hmm. Two weeks later, we’re moving the needle; it’s working, but not enough to satisfy Charley. Let’s tweak the dosage on your BP medication and check again in two weeks. Thank you, Charley, for the wonderful experience and the excellent result! Remember the days when you typed and mailed all your correspondence? Then you waited two weeks for a reply. Doesn’t seem possible, does it? So buck up; it’s early days yet. If it’s alright with you, I’ll continue to envision the day my great grandkids say to me, “Boka, is it true you used to drive 10 miles to see a doctor once a year and called that ‘healthcare’?” David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Share Previous Next

As a chaplain, I am allowed to talk about faith or pray with a client if that is what he or she wants. Like many people in our secular and even religious society, I am to be there for ‘those of all faiths or none.’ < Back Being a Faith Chaplain in a Secular World By Rev. Dr. Anne-Louise Critchlow May 29, 2022 As a chaplain, I am allowed to talk about faith or pray with a client if that is what he or she wants. Like many people in our secular and even religious society, I am to be there for ‘those of all faiths or none.’ Like many of us, I work for a company that, while endorsing ‘good moral values,’ does not want to propagate Christian beliefs. So, why would this company want a chaplain to work with its staff and clientele? As far as my employers are concerned, they want me to be concerned with the well-being of their residents (over 55s, some of whom live in independent living units, while some in residential care houses). According to my terms of employment: I can show pastoral care by engaging with residents’ problems and worries; I can give bereavement counseling and advice; I can promote community events; and I can even contribute to their understanding of their own spirituality! However, ‘spirituality’ is a cover-all term for enjoyment of music, poetry, art, and nature. “Everyone has spirituality,” says those interested in this term, “But it may or may not involve specific beliefs or religion, and we should not try to impose our beliefs on anyone.” As a chaplain, I am allowed to talk about faith or pray with a client if that is what he or she wants. Like many people in our secular and even religious society, I am to be there for ‘those of all faiths or none.’ Those of all faiths or none… Have you heard this phrase before? It is very likely that you have because it is used by those who work in education, local councils, hospitals, and anyone in the caring professions. This phrase allows us to include everyone without discrimination (which is helpful), but it also appears to stop those who have a particular religious conviction from sharing it with others. It is a very common remit in the twenty-first century – a sort of catch-all label that means I should offend no one and treat all beliefs as if they are the same, thus supporting the idea that what is true for me may not be true for you. It appears to be the ultimate in tolerance, and tolerance is one of the gods of our secular age. So, how can I work as a chaplain while being true to my faith convictions? You might object, “Surely the apostles were very direct in the way they evangelized? Why can’t we be the same?” You can try being very outspoken if you like, but you will soon find you are dismissed from your job. It is also dishonest to agree to your terms of employment and then override them. As for the apostles, they weren’t being paid by a secular employer, and looking closer at some stories in the Acts of the Apostles, we see that Paul engaged with different audiences and different worldviews in a variety of ways, and we would be well advised to do the same. He discussed the Good News with those in authority in the synagogue, appealing to their knowledge of their own religion, but when he spoke to the citizens of Athens in the Areopagus, he was careful to quote their own poets, as a starting point in the discussion. (Acts 17:28) The early apostles started where their audiences were in terms of culture and understanding, and we can do the same. Listening to where people are in their understanding of life is always worthwhile. Once people feel valued by us, they may trust us to open up about what they really feel, especially about their spiritual concerns. It is a privilege to be invited into their world and their worries; however, we should proceed respectfully. “I’d like to chat to the chaplain, as long as she doesn’t mention God,” one of our residents told the housekeeper. I spent an hour listening to the tragic events of her life and the anxieties she had endured. I asked her the odd question, seeking clarification, but, as she had requested, there was no mention of God. The next time I met her, I listened again. Suddenly, she blurted out, “So, what do you think about believing in God when I have shared with you all of my sufferings?” “Are you sure you want me to talk about that?” I inquired carefully. “Yes, I do,” she replied. After a long discussion, she asked me to pray for her. All this from a resident who had asked me not to mention God! Her life story also points out the truth of the fact that we should not lightly dismiss suffering or sound as though we have easy answers for someone’s personal difficulties. Sometimes, just being alongside them is enough for them to know that they are loved and understood. Nor should we stereotype the sort of person who might be open to God. I had a request from a long-term alcoholic to pray for him, when all the more outwardly respectable people in the housing unit showed no interest in faith at all. The next time I saw him, he had turned his back on addiction – quite an answer to prayer! An ex-soldier suffering from PTSD and heaving drinking was behaving terribly to staff and residents alike. The business director was surprised by his request: “I want to see the chaplain.” We prayed together over a number of months, and when he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, he put his faith in Jesus. I was limited by my work agreement, but he was not limited at all in what he told his fellow residents about his hope of eternal life. In his will, he asked that I take his funeral – what a privilege! Events for residents – body, mind, and spirit I advertise such events with complete transparency so that residents can stay away if they are so inclined. By having a laugh together and sharing on a human level, they relax, and when I tell them a story about how God has forgiven me or if I share a parable or written prayer, they don’t turn away. My secular employer acknowledges that everyone has a spiritual part of their nature, and how true that is. I find that as people get older, they want to know more about their spirituality and experience God. The extraordinary power of prayer No government or company or department can legislate against prayer. I pray for all the places and people I visit, and God answers those prayers! One resident, Betty, was given two weeks to live, suddenly realized she didn’t know how she was going to meet God. She had only met me once when I had prayed for her, but now she felt the force of that prayer, and she asked to see me again. I told her the story of the lost sheep, and she asked to be found by the Good Shepherd. Another Christian resident was made to sign an agreement with her housing provider, affirming that she would not share her faith with the other residents. She was very upset, but she prayed for her fellow residents. On my next visit to her house, I presented an Easter experience event – again with a mixture of games, a quiz, and crafts, but also the power of the Easter story. Who does not need to know about forgiveness and the hope of eternal life? All the people she had silently prayed for came to that event. She said to me later, “Anne-Louise, I thought that God’s work through me had been stopped, but he sent you to do the work instead.” We agreed that we had an unseen partnership! The challenge of dementia Can you communicate the love of God to someone who has lost their mind and memory? God is not hindered, nor should we feel so hindered. While in a discussion with a group of residents about Easter memories, suddenly a resident with dementia, who could hardly speak, sang “There is a green hill far away.” We sang the hymn together, and she recounted what she had heard in Sunday school as a child. (This should be an encouragement to Sunday school teachers!) “Deep calls to deep.” (Psalm 42 v. 7) God speaks to people through recalled memory. We, too, can speak the truth to the memories in the caverns of one’s mind and heart. Restrictions are no barrier to the real work of God I have seen this truth in all areas of work. When I worked with Street Pastors, a Christian organization, we could not share our faith openly when in partnership with the Council and the Police on the streets and in the pubs, but we were allowed to answer questions and respond to requests for prayer. Again and again, we saw people relaxing when they were under no pressure, and we were guests ‘on their turf.’ Because of their feeling of authority, they shared their problems with us openly, asked for prayer, and thanked us for what we were doing. I told more people about Jesus on the streets under those restrictions than I did in the church building. I now wonder whether the politically correct restrictions on faith imposed in the workplace are as detrimental as I once thought. One thing is sure: God has his own way of speaking to people, whether we are ready or not. Let us not be afraid of secular employers and restrictions. No one can stand in the way of God’s work, of drawing His people to Himself. Rev. Dr. Anne-Louise Critchlow has been a teacher of English Literature, a church pastoral worker, and a chaplain in France, North Africa, Manchester, and Bristol (UK). She is married with four children and thirteen grandchildren. She now works southwest of England as a chaplain. 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< Back Bending With Angels, Resting in the Wait of Christmas Deborah Rutherford "In the silence of time, God's chosen ones fervently pray "Messiah" on their lips as it was in olden times and is now. "Come, Lord Jesus!" "Come again, Lord Jesus!" How can we know that morning is still coming on the darkest day, the shortest one, which feels 400 years long? This year, the Winter Solstice occurs on December 21st, 2024. On the Winter Solstice, our earth about stops as we step into a deep dark. This signals the beginning of winter where barren trees are asleep along with many of the animals. Resting creation. Does this call for us to rest? But do we stop? Isn't it our human tendency at this time of the year to be quite busy, and might stopping be counterproductive? The liturgical rhythms of the hours, tides, seasons, and the liturgical church calendar are God's sacred time. We are invited to draw near to God's heart and embrace our covenant with our Heavenly Father. To rest in Him. We are living in the in-between, a luminal space between our born Savior and our resurrected King Jesus coming again, our earthen existence and our eternal home. Our world circles around to the birth of Christ each year, as it has throughout the ages. It is a time when creation holds its breath on the darkest night in anticipation of God’s holy splendor. Do we hold our breath too? Wondering: Will the Star shine in the night? Will the Angels bend for us, too, with their harps of gold? Will Jesus come, again? In anticipation we wait, and in the dark, the silence, the pause, the rest, God asks, "Do you believe?" “Do you trust me?” This is a yearly moment of trusting in the dark, where we repeatedly experience the Holy story: the immaculate conception, the miracle birth, and the proclamation to all men that God has peace for us and a Savior. God has come to us. God takes us with Him on the Cross. God gives us resurrection. God in the flesh, Emmanuel. In the silence of time, God's chosen ones fervently pray "Messiah" on their lips as it was in olden times and is now. "Come, Lord Jesus!" "Come again, Lord Jesus! Where a God so loved the world that with a promise that began in the garden: “He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel,” (Genesis 3 NKJV), comes to fruition in a stable in Bethlehem when a babe was born unto a virgin, a promise proclaimed to shepherds nearby in a field, a promise proclaimed across the ages and a promise that continues today when our King Jesus returns. This is the reassurance of God's enduring promises, a source of comfort and security in the darkest days. How do we hang on to the joy of Christmas during the darkest day when we may, for a moment, hold our breath? Can we rest in God when there are packages to wrap, candles to light, and cookies to bake? How do we wait in the luminal space of the in-between? On the darkest day, when the Winter Solstice comes, although we know surely Christmas is coming, here are Five ways to intentionally bend with the Angels: READ: Set aside time to read the Holy Stories from Luke 1-2 and Matthew 1-2. This is best done with the whole family. Invite the wonder of what the shepherds were experiencing. What was Mary pondering? What was Joseph thinking? Inhale and exhale your breath slowly and read: "Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” Luke 2:8-14 NKJV WORSHIP of our Lord Jesus is what we were made to do. Just as the Angels came in song and proclamation, so do we. Make a Spotify playlist of your favorite Christmas songs and play them all day long. Grab a guitar with a fire glowing and like the Angels sing! PRAYER is where we meet with our Holy Father because we do not have to wait to be with Him. We can be with Jesus right now. God can always be with us, in the past, present, and future. He is in our presence now. We are welcome in His throne room. We can meet with the Lord privately and share family prayers with each other. REST: On this darkest day of the year, rest in God's promise that He is coming again and ponder, as Mary did after giving birth to Jesus. How can we not stop thinking about Jesus and all He has done for us? How can we not tell? We are part of the greatest story ever told; now, let's go tell it. HOPE: We, ourselves, or those we know may be going through dark times, a season of suffering, loneliness, or shaken faith. Let's hold on to our hope and joy this Christmas season because we have a God who loves us. We have his Peace. We have Jesus. This may be the start of winter, but it also means more sunlight is coming. This reflects the light of our Lord breaking through into the darkness. Shine as His stars in today's Christmas sky to guide fellow brethren homeward bound. Just as Jesus is the light in the darkness, so are we. This is how we rest in the wait of Christmas. A Christmas Prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for bending low to be with us and coming to us in human flesh, our Savior Jesus Christ. Oh, what a glorious day! We will celebrate this Christmas when the brightest light awakens the dark and forever changes our lives. We wait in anticipation for You, our resurrected King, to come. Thank you for coming on the darkest day to our weary world. No day is too dark for you! In Jesus' name, Amen. Deborah Rutherford is a Christian wife who loves to write stories, devotionals, and poetry. She is also an award-winning makeup artist. Deborah shares her journey of faith, joy, and beauty on her blog at www.deborahrutherford.com and social media. She is a contributing writer for Aletheia Today Magazine , Kingdom Edge Magazine and Gracefully Truthful Ministries and has a devotional in the book “Shepherd on Duty: Promises of God you Can Trust ” (Arabelle Publishing) and the Calla Press, Literary Journal Spring 2023. 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< Back Was Rousseau Right After all? David Cowles Mar 6, 2026 “Utopians of all stripes…have long argued that human beings are capable of self-government with little or no interference from a coercive state. Perhaps they’re right!” 1600 words, 7 minute read In 1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote the Social Contract , one of the most influential works of political philosophy in the Western World. Rousseau hypothesized a collection of human individuals and families, living in proximity to one another but lacking any defined social institutions. He called this The State of Nature . Rousseau purports to trace the process of socialization, beginning with this blank slate and leading to complex social structures, albeit different from the typical 18th century European State. He reasoned, somewhat tortuously, that people would have freely and voluntarily ceded personal property and political sovereignty in exchange for legal title and collective security. Needless to say, Rousseau’s work was, and still is, controversial. One key question : Did he believe he was describing an actual historical process, or did he intend his proposal to be read more as a thought experiment? Sidebar : In the 1960’s Harvard professor, John Rawls retraced Rousseau’s intellectual journey. However, Rawls was clear from the outset that his process was purely hypothetical and had no basis in history or anthropology. The result was A Theory of Justice , a classic of political theory even today. Did I mention it was the ‘60s? Rawls was concerned with the question of whether any form of government could ever be legitimate. Unlike many of his colleagues (and students) at the time, he came to a positive conclusion…but only by requiring any such state to satisfy some very stringent economic and political conditions. (We’re not there yet!) Regardless of original intent, most scholars now agree with Rawls that Rousseau’s State of Nature needs to be understood as a mental construct. Obviously! Except… some recent archeological evidence suggests that something resembling Rousseau’s proto-culture might actually have existed…in Central Europe. And I’m not talking about the Shire! We’ll need to go back in time…but not that far back! Archaeologists have recently uncovered evidence of a Neolithic culture (the Vinca, see map above) spanning much of what is today modern Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania). Remarkably, the Vinca dominated that busy cultural intersection for a millennium c. 5000 BCE. There are signs that Vinca society made the transition from something resembling Rousseau’s State of Nature to his Proto-State. If so, it would have great significance for contemporary social philosophy. Let’s start with a brief survey: Vinca settlements exhibit sophisticated Urban Planning. Residential areas are set apart from areas designated for community, commerce, and manufacture. Is this the Western world’s first attempt at zoning? Within the residential quarter, buildings are arranged in symmetrical patterns, reflecting both pre-planning and a high level of cooperation. There seems to have been a robust division of labor with specific individuals performing certain roles essential to the Vinca economy: e.g. hunting, agriculture, manufacturing and trade, but with no hint of any class or caste disparities. Yet there is no evidence that Vinca society had any sort of central government. The political process appears to have been decentralized with de facto power distributed among members of society in a more or less egalitarian manner and on an ad hoc basis. One is reminded of the period of the Judges (c. 1250 – 1050 BCE) in Israel. There is no evidence of any designated political or religious castes, no evidence of bureaucracy, and only slight evidence of disparities in status, wealth or power. Finally, there is no evidence of any standing army and Vinca settlements lack any signs of the fortifications characteristic of that era. Apparently, the Vinca lived long and prospered due to their critical role in trans-European trade and their cultural and technological contributions to Greater Neolithic Europe. One can imagine a Vinca PR slogan: “We threaten no one, we benefit everyone!” Because we are comparing Vinca society with Rousseau’s State of Nature, we are focused on its political and economic institutions (above), but the Vinca also made important contributions to the evolution of European culture: The Vinca produced a great many objects d’art , some quite remarkable in their own right (see Appendix below). Many of those pieces were adorned with graphic symbols (as below). Whether these markings were merely decorative or emblematic of mythological or philosophical ideas is a matter of debate. Separately, a system of markings (cross, X’s, hatch marks, etc.) was used and may constitute an early form of writing. If so, it would have preceded Sumerian Cuneiform and Egyptian Hieroglyphics. Finally, the Vinca may have been millennia ahead on the matter of gender identity. Men and women did have distinct social and economic roles in Vinca society. However, there is no evidence that this was a source of any discontent or discrimination. On the contrary, a burial site recently uncovered in Hungary and dating back to the Vinca era shows signs of gender plasticity. Traditionally, men and women were buried in different positions with different artifacts. However, out of the 125 Neolithic graves recently opened, 7 contained skeletons of folks (both genders) who had been buried opposite to their birth physiology. It seems reasonable to speculate that these ritual anomalies reflect those individuals’ non-traditional identities, roles and lifestyle choices. If Vinca culture is so fundamentally divergent from the European norm, we should expect to find evidence of a different Weltanschauung embedded in its language. But hard cheese: we know virtually nothing about their language except that it was probably pre-Indo-European (pre-IE). Today, only one pre-IE is still spoken in Europe: Basque thrives in a geographically and culturally isolated region around the Pyrenees Mountains in what is now Southwestern France/Northeastern Spain. Let’s be clear: there is no evidence that modern Basque resembles ancient ‘Vinca’ in any way! But what if it did? As you might expect, Basque has a grammatical structure very different from today’s Indo-European (IE) tongues. Intriguingly, these differences appear to be consonant with the unusual features of Vinca culture and social structure. For example… Basque lacks the grammatical gender (masculine, feminine) characteristic of IE languages. This may reflect Vinca’s kinder, gentler take on gender stereotyping. Basque uses ergative-absolutive rather than the nominative-accusative cases universal in IE languages. In IE languages, the subject of both transitive and intransitive verbs takes the same case (nominative): "She runs" and "She sees him" . Basque works according to a completely different logos : The subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb both take the absolutive case. The subject of a transitive verb takes a different case entirely — the ergative, marked with the suffix -k . (Nordic languages, ancient and modern, use a similar suffix for processes that are reciprocal or recursive in nature.) The ergative frame implicitly asks: are you the originating cause of this event, or are you the field in which it occurs? Are you the figure or the ground? The wave or the particle? Schrödinger’s equation or its collapse? IE grammar trains us to look for a naked doer, someone to take the blame, and when there isn't, we invent one. Basque uses a SOV (Subject-Object-Verb) word order, placing the verb at the end of the clause. Accordingly, the verb brings subject and object together rather than dividing them as it does in SVO languages (e.g. IE). SOV conveys a ‘we’re all in this together’ ethos rather than the ‘dog eat dog’ we’re used to. Mind Blow : Basque has no direct equivalent for the verb "to have." In IE languages, to have is right behind to be on any list of frequently used verbs. Yet the concept does not naturally occur in Basque. Imagine building a language without the verb ‘to be’! Try it. (Neolithic Europeans did so without the verb ‘to have’.) Possession is expressed through a construction meaning roughly "something is to/at me" — using the verb izan (to be) with the dative. This places Basque (and potentially Vinca) philosophy half way between Classical Liberalism (the absolute right to private property) and Marxism (the abolition of private property). Intriguingly, this is also approximately the position of Islam, Hasidic Judaism and the Roman Catholic Church: there is a right to private property but it is not absolute. Ultimately, everything belongs to God, but it is parceled out to individuals and families for them to nurture…and protect from incursions by ‘diabolical powers’, e.g. the errant mega-state. Inspired by Homer and HBO, we imagine early European societies as authoritarian, aristocratic, and bellicose; and in some cases that may be apt. But not in every case! A deeper dive into the Vinca civilization may broaden our concept of what’s possible for pre-historical societies…and for us today. Radical democrats, libertarians, anarchists, and utopians of all stripes (from St. Benedict to John Eliot to Karl Marx) have long argued that human beings are capable of self-government with little or no interference from a coercive state. Perhaps they’re right! Appendix Vinca figurine of a woman (4800-3000 BC) This Vinca figurine is remarkable. Note the proto-spirals associated with the breasts and the more developed spirals associated with genitalia. Cross-culturally, the spiral is one of several symbols (Cross, Star of David, et al.) that seem to symbolize the connection between the immanent, phenomenal world and its transcendent, noumenal doppelganger . After all, God appeared to Job ‘out of the (spiral) whirlwind’ and Dorothy traveled to Oz on the wings of a (spiral) cyclone. In the language of contemporary cosmology, the spiral may be telling us something: it may be pointing at the phenomenon of scale-independent fractals. 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< Back Ovid vs. Plato David Cowled Sep 20, 2025 “Ovid freed us from the collective anonymity of Plato and prepared us for the intensely personal theology of Jesus.” At the age of 12, I first encountered Homer (in translation, of course – I’m no John Stuart Mill). To my credit, I immediately realized I had no idea what was going on. Judeo-Christianity has its challenges: burning bushes, parting seas, multiplying foodstuffs and my personal favorite, water that tastes, and intoxicates, like musty old vintage wine, 1er cru. That said, the Bible reads like a 20 th century tech manual compared to Greco-Roman mythology: Gods battling gods at every turn, incarnate every where, in humans, animals, plants, and even stones; in the phenomena of echo and reflection; in the rhythms of nature – the sunrise and the seasons; in love itself, and even in the realm of the dead (Hades). And what of these gods? Petty, vain, mischievous, jealous, vengeful, sibling rivals… I am no longer 12; I’m many multiples on…and then some. But I’m still baffled by Greco-Roman mythology, or at least I was until I rediscovered Ovid. (I’d read Ovid before and liked him…but that was in Latin class and our focus was on his use of language, not his metaphysics.) Today I am well described by Ben Johnson as one having “little Latin and no Greek” but I am still krazy ‘bout kosmology . Who would not wish to understand the metaphysics of Mount Olympus even if the behavior of the gods is reprehensible? (Perhaps you, dear reader…to your credit!) But as for me, I’m hooked. Of course, my friends and family have organized all the politically correct interventions, but to no avail. Imagine my excitement then when I realized that the Key-to-Rebecca had existed all along, for almost exactly 2000 years in fact. It was my Rosetta Stone moment. Ovid’s Metamorphoses is many things but none more important than the cypher, i.e. the code, needed to unravel the mysteries of Greco-Roman mythology. It is the Cliff’s Notes version of a millennial civilization… except that these Notes come in a spectacular epic poem. Like Europe’s A-List violin concerti, the Canon of great epic poems is quite limited: Iliad , Odyssey , Aeneid , of course, then Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost , and in the middle, acting as a fulcrum, Ovid’s Metamorphoses , bridging the gap between two civilizations (Classical and Christian), and in doing so, providing a key to both. As I said, a Rosetta Stone ! How does it work? The turn of the millennium Latin poet built a comprehensive cosmology around the concept of Identity and expressed it in glorious verse. In Metamorphoses , Ovid treats Identity as if it were a cosmic onion. The outermost layer, the skin, is the region we Platonists call Form . According to Plato, Form is substructural. First, X is a chair , then X is this chair; first X is a man, then X is me. Species > individual. My form is the cornerstone of my identity. “Not so!” according to Ovid. Form is infinitely variegated. Its vicissitudes are endless and entirely superficial…and therefore Form is ultimately meaningless. Ovid turns Plato on his head, much the same as Marx did Hegel 1850 years later. As the outer layers of the cosmic onion are peeled away, we drill ever deeper into the essence of the existent. We are dogged in our expectation of finding a pony at the bottom of this pile of excrement. But we are disappointed every time. Like Prospero, we are left empty handed: “Our revels now are ended. These, our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air; and—like the baseless fabric of this vision— the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, and like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on…” - The Tempest (Shakespeare) 100 years after Ovid but 1500 years before Shakespeare, John of Patmos had a similar ‘revelation’. His vision, which fills most of the final book of the Christian Bible, includes the systematic breaking of 7 seals, reminiscent of the layers of Ovid’s cosmic onion. But when the 7th seal is broken, John, like Shakespeare’s audience and Ovid, gets a stupefying surprise: Out of the organ grinder’s box pops ‘Jack’, Jean-Paul in fact, Sartre. Not the man himself, of course, but his singular contribution to the Intellectual History of the West, i.e. Le Neant. ( Being and Nothingness ) John watched (and listened) as the Lamb broke open each seal in turn. Each brought new and terrifying sights and sounds: a voice like thunder, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, Death and Hell itself, the blood of martyrs. Then, with the breaking of the sixth seal, “there was a great earthquake, the sun turned as black and dark as sackcloth, and the whole moon became like blood. The stars in the sky fell to Earth like unripe figs shaken loose in a strong wind. Then the sky was divided, like a torn scroll…” (Like the curtain in the Temple at the hour of Christ’s crucifixion.) But even this is still just preparation for the great event yet to come, the breaking of the seventh seal, the fulcrum on which Revelation balances. Consider the Amen chorus at the end of Handel’s great oratorio, Messiah. Midway through this varied but bombastic summation of the ‘greatest story ever told,’ the orchestra and the chorus suddenly fall silent and stay silent for several measures. This is the pivotal musical moment corresponding to the breaking of the 7th Seal in salvation history as told in Revelation. The rest Handel placed in his Amen is one of the most profound moments in all of Western music. It links the final chorus of the world’s greatest oratorio with the final book of the Bible. If you’re lucky enough to be in the audience for a competent performance, then at that moment, you are John of Patmos! So, if Platonic Form is unrelated to identity ( per Ovid), what takes its place, what assumes that role? What survives formal changes, no matter how numerous or thorough? Sense of Self . According to Ovid, we retain our sense of being ourselves through all our ‘formal’ changes. I am always, ever, and only me , regardless of how I may appear. Memory ( Persistence of , Dali). We remember all our prior forms and some of our experiences under each, just as seniors remember events from childhood and middle age. Qualia . Although forms can change utterly in Ovid, basic qualities endure. A ‘beautiful’ girl becomes just as beautiful as a tree, heifer, or spring. Values . In a dramatic affirmation of Transcendent (eternal and universal) Values, so central to Judeo-Christian ethics, Ovid’s personalities retain their chosen values throughout their changes in form. Consider Daphne who begs her father to change her into a tree so she can preserve her chastity from Apollo…who continues to love her, even in her new form: “If you cannot be my wife, you will be my tree,” and everyday he wears her laurel leaves. Daphne’s chastity and Apollo’s lust will undoubtedly survive any future changes of form. Or Io, changed into a cow by Juno, continuing to follow her family, hoping for a gentle touch or a handful of grass. Unable to speak, she uses her hoof to write out in the sand the story of her dreadful change. Later, when she regains her human form, “no trace of heifer is left, except the lovely whiteness of her flesh…And now she is a celebrated goddess, revered by crowds clothed in white linen: Isis.” Io has been through it all but her sense of self never waivers, her memories persist throughout and her defining whiteness, acquired as a heifer, continues as a god. Identity is not a function of Form; in fact, they are entirely unrelated. Real identity lies in (1) our immanent and intuitive sense of self, i.e. consciousness, (2) our unique collection of historical experiences as they persist in Memory, and (3) the transcendental values we apply when judging our World and forming our Subjective Aim. Plato can be read as a critical meditation on the Homeric myths. Ovid freed us from the collective anonymity of Plato and prepared us for the intensely personal theology of Jesus, just one generation later. *** Ovid among the Scythians (painted twice by Eugène Delacroix in 1859 and 1862) imagines the Roman poet Ovid during his exile on the Black Sea, far from the cultured life of Rome. In the canvas, nomadic Scythians approach the seated poet with curiosity and a mix of reverence and hospitality, set within a vast, windswept steppe of muted blues and ochres. The work contrasts Ovid’s refined, contemplative presence with the rugged vitality of the Scythian world, creating a poetic meditation on exile, cultural encounter, and the enduring power of art and intellect. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

“Because every event is sui generis, no event causes any other event! That said, every event contributes to the Actual World of every subsequent event.” < Back Causality and 'The Bhagavad Gita' David Cowles Oct 15, 2023 “Because every event is sui generis, no event causes any other event! That said, every event contributes to the Actual World of every subsequent event.” In an earlier article Cause and Effect , we spelled out a ‘new’ theory of causality , based in part on the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. According to this model, every ‘act’ ( aka Actual Entity) begins with the conversion of the disordered multiplicity that is Universe (“Universe is plural” – Buckminster Fuller) into a uniquely ordered nexus, an Actual World. Each Actual Entity (event) has its own Actual World: one world, one event; one event, one world! However, it is important to note at the outset that the Actual World does not in any way cause or determine its Actual Entity; rather every Actual Entity determines its own Actual World. The first stage in the concrescence of any Actual Entity is a single process with three aspects: (1) conversion of the Multiplicity (Universe) into a nexus (Actual World), (2) evaluation of that nexus in terms of objective eternal values, and (3) formation of intent (‘subjective aim’), not necessarily conscious, based on that evaluation. Expressed this way, these three ‘aspects’ seem to suggest a sequence; however, that is a trick of language. In fact, they constitute a single act with three simultaneous aspects. In the real world, process is multi-valent, not simply vectored through time. This initial stage is motivated and guided by transcendental values (‘eternal objects’), like Beauty, Truth, and Justice, that logically (not temporally) precede Universe and subsist in God’s Primordial Nature. The final stage in the concrescence of any Actual Entity is also a single process with three simultaneous aspects: (1) satisfaction, (2) objective immortality, and (3) superject. These aspects are denotatively identical but connotatively distinct. Here the three-in-one phenomenon is a bit more apparent. ‘Satisfaction’ is the realization of the ‘subjective aim’ as felt by the Actual Entity itself; ‘objective immortality’ is that satisfaction seen from the perspective of the Multiplicity; and ‘superject’ is that objective immortality felt by other Actual Entities, including God’s Consequent Nature. The function of every act is to convert intention into satisfaction. This is the act itself and the process is called ‘concrescence’ (Whitehead). In the process of concrescence, the subjective aim usually undergoes substantial modification. The event ends as a ‘settled matter of fact’ (objective immortality) projected (superject) into the Actual Worlds of all future Actual Entities. The ‘subject’ of the action, the Actual Entity itself, is responsible (1) for its intention (subjective aim), (2) for its objective immortality (superject), and (3) for the way (‘subjective form’) that the intention is reflected in the satisfaction. Style counts! Every event is sui generis , it ‘causes itself’. Is this Nihilism? Or Solipsism? The very opposite! Every event begins with an evaluation of ‘everything that is’, and the formation of a complex intention that reflects that valuation and the relevant values it seeks to realize. On the other hand, no event is responsible for the way it is received by and integrated into subsequent Actual Entities. That is entirely the responsibility of those subsequent entities. Because every event is sui generis , no event causes any other event! That said, every event contributes to the Actual World of every subsequent event. This model of reality is not new, not to me, not even to Whitehead. In fact, I discovered a similar concept of causality in a 2000 year old Hindu scripture, the justly famous Bhagavad Gita . Let’s set the scene: We are on a field of battle but Arjuna, commander of one of the armies, is having second thoughts. He recognizes his kinship with the warriors on the other side and he is loath to kill them: “I foresee no good resulting from slaughtering my kin in war…for if we killed these murderers, evil like theirs would cling to us…The wrong done by this destruction is evident… Nor do we know whether it would be better for us to vanquish them or to be overcome.” In just a few words, Arjuna raises three cogent arguments against ‘activism’: (1) ‘karma’ from committed acts blows back on whoever commits those acts; (2) the acts that duty calls us to perform may be immoral per se (for example, killing other human beings); (3) there is no way to know anything about the long term consequences of our actions. Fortunately, however, Arjuna is best buds with the divine Lord Krishna and this ‘Handsome Haired One’ sets the ‘Strong-Armed Warrior’ straight: “Your concern should be with action, never with action’s fruits.” Lord Krishna swats away Arjuna’s weighty reservations with the flick of his supple wrist. In the process, he exposes the unstated premise undergirding both the Renaissance and the Enlightenment: i.e., that future events ( ends ) are ‘caused’ by prior events ( means ). Krishna exhorts Arjuna to detach himself from the fruits of his actions and to focus exclusively on the actions themselves. This is not an appeal for Quietism. Rejection of the fruits of action is not the same thing as rejection of action itself: “Not by not acting in this world does one become free from action… Not even for a moment does someone exist without acting… In order to maintain the world, your obligation is to act… Should I not engage in action these worlds would perish, utterly…” Today, we know that the cessation of all activity is synonymous with Absolute Zero on the Kelvin Scale; 0°K defines Big Freeze , the end of Universe. Krishna was ahead of his time. Non-action is an illusion. To be is to act. The question is how : “Scripture is your authority for what to do and not to do. Understanding its injunctions, you are obliged to action…These actions, though, should be performed without attachment to their fruits…” By Scripture, the Gita is referring to the Hindu Vedas and the Upanishads. Scripture plays a comparable role in Judeo-Christian theology. Here though, we are referring to the Torah, the Midrashim, the Talmud, the Semon on the Mount, etc. “All actions are undertaken by the qualities of nature though one deceived by his ego imagines, ‘I am doing this’… Qualities act on one another.” In other words, God, the conduit of all values into the world, acts through us, his mortal agents. Per Whitehead, all action is motivated by qualities (values). Actual Entities are the loci of acts but the acts themselves are pure expressions of values. The ‘subject’ is merely the mechanism by which those values are realized in the present and projected into the future. “Better to do one’s own duty ineptly than another’s well.” Here, The Gita calls to mind Paul’s contemporaneous Letter to Ephesians: “For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God had prepared in advance that we should live in them.” (2: 10) We do not determine our duty. We divine it and we perform it…or we don’t! Duty is dictated by the ‘eternal objects’ ( aka ‘transcendental values’) that constitute God’s Primordial Nature. Nor is Krishna (God) exempt from these laws ( dharma ): “In order to protect the good…and to establish righteousness, age after age, I come to be.” God too is a manifestation of ‘qualities acting on one another’. Good is what constitutes God and it is God who projects Good into Universe. No Good, no God! No God, no Good! This is a radical form of the ontological argument for the existence of God. Medieval theologians noted that some entities are ‘more good’ than others. They reasoned that there must therefore be something that is ‘ most good ’, and that whatever is ‘most good’ must exist, because it is better to exist than not. That ‘most good being’ is what we call ‘God’. The Gita arrives at the same destination via a somewhat different route; Krishna says, “Know me as one who never acts.” - i.e., as one who selflessly lets qualities act through him. Speaking of qualities, “Of lights, I am the radiant sun…of stars, I am the Moon…of beings, I am consciousness…of waters, I am Ocean…of mountains, I am the Himalayas…of mortal men, I am the king…of rivers, I am Ganges…of creations, I am beginning, middle, and end…of speakers, I am the discourse…of secrets, I am the silence, and the knowledge of those who know…” Anslem of Bec never wrote like this! But a Medieval Irish poet ( St. Dallan ) came close: “Be Thou my vision…my best thought…my light…my wisdom…my true word…my treasure...” Like Dallan, Krishna defines himself in terms of essential qualities: “I am water’s taste, Arjuna, I am the light of the sun and moon…sound in the air, manhood in men. I am the pure fragrance of earth and the radiance of fire; I am the life in all beings…the mind of the intelligent, the splendor of the radiant. I am the might of the mighty…” “And know that states of being…proceed from me – however, I am not in them, they are in me…Here behold all the universe…standing as one in my body.” “I am that which is the seed within all beings, Arjuna – without me nothing can exist.” The Gospel of John applies this same insight to Christ: “All things came to be through him and without him nothing came to be.” (1: 3) Finally, Krishna makes clear to Arjuna that he neither controls nor is responsible for the course of events in the world: “Those warriors arrayed in lines opposing your men, even without you, will have perished…I have destroyed your enemy already: serve as my tool, O Ambidextrous Archer! (Arjuna)” “Who sees himself as the sole doer, does not see…even after slaying these people, he neither slays, nor is he bound…” Arjuna is responsible for discerning his duty, perhaps with a gentle nudge from Lord Krishna, and then performing that duty to the best of his ability. That will be his legacy, not the outcome of some battle now barely visible through the fog of history. So how is any of this different from the traditional Western view of causality? I’ll grant you the distinction is subtle…but important! We tend to focus on intent, motive, ‘what was he trying to do’. The model we are proposing here includes the formation of intent but also the execution of that intent. Our judges put great emphasis on the dismount. We focus on ‘settled matters of fact’: what did he do! We are not concerned, however, with what happens next. What use future Actual Entities make of Arjuna’s Objective Immortality is between them and their God. Leave Arjuna out of it. He is not to blame for the Great London Fire (1666) or for Johnny’s poor performance on this morning’s algebra exam. So, in the spirit of Voltaire ( Candide ), “Tend to your own patch!” David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Harvest Issue 2023 Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

“The most important thing we’ve learned is that we know so much less than we thought we knew.” < Back Is the Universe Real David Cowles Jul 15, 2024 “The most important thing we’ve learned is that we know so much less than we thought we knew.” What must it have been like to stare up at the stars c. 2000 BCE? The Universe is your patch! You have qualified dominion over the animals and plants, and you can imagine setting sail on that great whale rode ( Beowulf ) we now know as the Milky Way. It is easy to see how we might have fallen prey to hubris . “I’m the king of this castle!” Things look a bit different now, don’t they? We know so much more, and the most important thing we’ve learned is that we know so much less than we thought we knew. Of course, in absolute terms we have exponentially more data points; but relative to what is available to be known , our noosphere is shrinking. For one thing, much of what we thought we knew has turned out to be wrong; for another, each new, hard-won kernel of gnosis has shone a spotlight on vast new regions of ignorance. Once upon a time I knew nowt about arithmetic. Then someone showed me that 1 + 1 = 2. Cool beans! Then what about 1 + 1 + 1? Or 2 + 1? Or 2 + 2? In a couple of years I’ll give you Principia Mathematica. Imagine that X stands for everything there is to know, and Y stands for what we do know. In 2000 BCE, Y might have been 10% of X. Wow! But 4,000 years later, things have changed. What we know now is more like 1% of what is available to be known. We are learning what we don’t know faster than we’re learning in the first place. As fast as we learn more about our universe, the faster we learn how much more we don’t know. Sidebar : If this process continues unabated, we may reach the coveted mystic state of absolute unknowing. In 1900 CE, we were like 4-year-olds. We knew everything there was to know. By 1950, we’d learned that there was a lot more to be known than we’d imagined. To make matters worse, we realized that much of what we thought we knew in 1900 wasn’t what we thought it was. By 1950 we’d begun playing with computers; 75 years later, our computers are playing with us. For 50 years, we programed our computers; now computers program themselves. How long before those same computers program us? “What is man (sic) that God should be mindful of him?” Good question, but it was easier to answer when homo sapiens was top dog in a Universe we imagined to be less than half the size of our solar system. Not so easy to answer in the context of a Universe that is 14 billion years old and contains a trillion galaxies. Or in the context of a body that is made up of nothing but 30 trillion independent life forms (cells). Now what is ‘man’ again…? We have absolutely no right to expect our tiny lives to matter. But if that’s so, then all the agony of living has been for naught. In the cosmic context, we are sparks. What is just is. It’s not good, or bad; it just is. It came to be without regard to values of any sort. Even ‘order’, a prerequisite of Value, is in ever dwindling supply. In fact, order max’d out at Big Bang. Like a well wound watch, our universe is slowly running downhill. By some estimates we’re already about 15% of the way to Heat Death. To the extent that order is related to Value, the high point was 14 billion years ago, and every moment thereafter is a step in the ‘wrong’ direction. Look at it another way. The primary values - Beauty, Truth, and Justice – can all be appreciated as different manifestations of ‘order’. Without an ordered background to draw from, none of these values could be operative. Therefore, if they are at all, they must be gradually disappearing. Not much to look forward to, is it? A world which will necessarily become uglier, less truthful, and more unjust over time. (Hmm, sound like somebody’s political system?) Such a Universe is simply a process of self-annihilation. If Being = Good, then Entropy = Evil; and so Jesus taught us to pray, “Deliver us from evil”. And consciousness? According to this model, consciousness is the accidental consequence of increasing entropy (Hawking). It is a trace left behind by the order that is vanishing. Living consciously in this world is like watching your uninsured McMansion burn to the ground. No wonder folks are depressed. Unless none of this is true! Recent advances in neuroscience suggest that consciousness (self-awareness, recursion) is coincident with life itself. Like love and marriage pre-1950, you apparently can’t have one without the other. As far as we know, all life is cellular. It is apparently the minimal condition required for DNA to be expressed, conserved and replicated. According to this model, the DNA molecule evolved only once on Earth, and it evolved in tandem with a cellular superstructure. If and when we discover non-terrestrial life, we may find phenomena that we want to classify as ‘living’ but that has nothing like DNA and/or no such cellular structure; but all that is mere conjecture now. As soon as the Earth had sufficiently cooled, the first DNA molecule was synthesized…and expressed as a conscious cell. As far as we know, in the 4 billion years since that momentous event, not a single new DNA molecule and not a single new cell has formed. Remarkable! That means, as far as we can say with any certainty, life and consciousness are one-offs. But of course, we’ve only surveyed a tiny corner of this vast universe. If Universe came to be accidentally and spontaneously and if it will ultimately self-annihilate, then what is it anyway? Here our academic overlords are split: either (1) the universe is real but has no meaning, no value, no purpose, or (2) what we call ‘universe’ is not real but only virtual. According to this later interpretation, the Universe ‘exists’ in same way virtual particles ‘exist’…it doesn’t. A virtual particle is a particle still born; it has no being . It is a sub-momentary dispensation from the great Neant that ultimately comes to nothing. Turns out though, the two models are identical, one framed in the vocabulary of Idealism, the other in the language of materialism. Gregory Bateson’s seminal contribution to Western philosophy is his insight that ‘being’ applies only to entities that ‘make a difference’. To be is to be different and to make a difference; an actual entity is “a difference that makes a difference”. Whatever is not distinguished from its inherited world and/or does not make a distinguishable contribution to the inheritable worlds of other entities…is not! Camus and Sartre applied such a test to the existence of ‘God’. For them, God is an entity whose existence, or non-existence, makes no difference. Therefore, whether God exists theoretically or not, God does not exist. In the language of symbolic notation (A υ ~A) = ~A. We might say the same of Universe. Whether it’s fully virtual or merely meaningless, it cannot ‘be’ because either way, the events that constitute it make no difference. Alternatively, the Universe is a locus of events, real events because each event is a difference that makes a difference. According to the ‘Standard Model’, events within Universe are actual entities because they are differences that make a difference, but not so Universe per se . That won’t wash! If Universe is annihilated at Heat Death, so are all its constituent events. Therefore, the great chain of difference is broken. In that case events are real only in the context of each other but not in any objective sense. So then, what of Universe itself? Events within Universe are real because they are differences that make a difference. Does Universe? Yes, but if and only if Universe is ‘different’ from the mere collection of events that make it up, and if there is something to which Universe can matter. If so, that ‘something’ must transcend the universe itself. Yet Universe must remain true to its name ( uni ). Only, Universe itself can meet this test. The Universe is a massively non-linear ‘perpetual recursion machine’. Every event shapes the whole as the whole shapes every event. Is this paganism? Or pantheism? Neither. The Universal process of perpetual recursion transcends the Universe itself. It is a manifestation of the Trinitarian God, the paradigm of recursion. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at dtc@gc3incorporated.com Return to our 2024 Beach Read Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? 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< Back Our Inanimate Neighbors “Awareness is always dynamic; it has no spatio-temporal location… Awareness is not a property of entities, or even of organisms; it is a property of networks.” David Cowles Do you ever wish that you’d still be alive when all of life’s biggest questions are finally resolved? Job said that dying without knowledge was the worst fate that could befall a human being. If so, it often seems as if that fate-worse-than-death is in store for all of us. But good news, you can relax! Problem solved; quest completed; target acquired; Grail in hand. You did it. You lived to see perhaps the most pressing problem of philosophy solved, right here, right now, in your lifetime, before your very eyes. But to appreciate that, we need a little background. Who am I and who is my neighbor? Two of the most profound, and contentious, questions in human history. According to Descartes, I am a being that thinks ( cogito ergo sum ). Such cognition must include awareness of an environment and awareness of an awareness of that environment. Cognition is recursive. It is its own object. Logically, then, anyone (or anything) that displays similar ‘recursive awareness’ must be my neighbor. So far so good, but the converse is pernicious: if you are not my neighbor, you cannot have recursive awareness. To our 21st century sensibility, the way forward seems obvious: draw up a list of beings who are capable of ‘recursive awareness’, like me, et violà – meet the neighbors! Instead, though, we begin by drawing up lists of our neighbors. Not on the list? Sorry, you must not possess recursive intelligence. How 20th century! Being neighbors is like belonging to an exclusive country club. To join, you need sponsors, and you need the approval of the other members. “I’m so sorry that you didn’t get in. Better luck in your next reincarnation!” For untold millennia, my neighbors were the members of my tribe . Beginning with my extended family, the concept of ‘tribe’ radiates outward: my village, my culture, my race, my class, my nationality, etc. A defining feature of tribalism is its insistence on dehumanizing, then marginalizing, everyone and everything that does not belong to my tribe. Membership does have its privileges (apologies to American Express). If you’re not my neighbor, then what are you? At best, you are a ‘proto-human’, a neanderthal or perhaps a yeti; less fortunately, you may a ‘beast’ or a ‘zombie’ or an ‘alien’ or even an inanimate object. Pity the lonely, inert paperweight, sitting on my desk. It wanted to join my club but got turned down; now it is forced to interact with me every day knowing that it didn’t measure up. I feel sorry for it but what can I do? A lowly paperweight is just not a member of my tribe! Or is it? On this website ( www.aletheiatoday.com ), we have spent some time visiting with the Piraha , a small, semi-isolated tribe in the Brazilian Amazon. Although the tribe graciously welcomes “European” traders, missionaries, anthropologists, linguists, etc., they do not regard these visitors as ‘fully human’. Tribalism is a virtually universal phenomenon in human culture. And us today? Are we still tribal? You bet we are! Grade school possies, middle school cliques, college frats (sic), country clubs, the Mafiosi. For all its endearing features, tribalism is a nightmare from which humanity is struggling to awake (apologies to James Joyce). Did Jesus kick-off this awakening some 2,000 years ago when he told the parable of the Good Samaritan? (I mean, if a Samaritan can be my neighbor, who can’t be?) Or was it Mister Rogers? Either way, in our lifetimes, a radical but welcome consensus is finally emerging: all human beings are my neighbors! Even if you don’t share my race, my class, my religion, my political party, or my nationality, you’re still my neighbor, i.e., you are my ontological equal. You exhibit recursive awareness. Red state? Blue state? Still a state! But before we get too self-congratulatory, we need to ask what the meaning of ‘all’ is (apologies to Bill Clinton). For example, does it include the ‘unborn’ and if so, when? At conception? At viability? At birth? How about babies likely to be born with serious birth defects? Does it include the very old? The disabled? The mentally ill? The ‘cognitively challenged’? How about someone who has been declared ‘brain-dead’? Or convicted of a capital crime? Not so simple after all, is it? Still, we have made progress. In fact, in recent decades, we have begun to consider whether the franchise tag (“neighbor”) should be extended beyond the boundaries of our species. What about certain primates (e.g., gorillas)? Sea mammals (e.g., whales)? Corvids (e.g., ravens, parrots)? And what about Spot, the family pet? What of our siblings in the Vegetable Kingdom? For example, how about trees, networked in a forest, that apparently communicate with each other and engage in purposive, collective, and, unlike some humans, consistently eleemosynary behavior? Yup, we’ve come a long way…but we have miles to go before we sleep (apologies to Robert Frost). Below this terrain, “Alph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man (sic).” (Coleridge) I’m talking metaphorically about the underground river of panpsychism . From Greek philosophy (Anaximander) to Monasticism (St. Francis), to Native American spirituality, to Hasidism (the Baal Shem Tov), to Process Philosophy (Alfred North Whitehead), to modern-day Druids and Greens (Gaia), there have always been people proposing to extend the ‘neighbor tag’ beyond the human species, beyond the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms, perhaps even to so-called inanimate objects . If these folks are right, literally everything changes! There is no more we and they ; there is always just us . There are no more subjects and objects ; now there are just entities . There are no more active or passive verbs ; there are only events. Nothing is secular or profane; everything is sacred. Recursive awareness is everywhere. The universe is alive…and conscious! But are these people right? (Smart money says otherwise.) Yet, an article recently appeared in Nature Communications (link below) and was summarized by “Astrobiology”. Let’s sample that summary: From a distance, they looked like clouds of dust. Yet, the swarm of microrobots in author Michael Crichton’s bestseller Prey was self-organized. It acted with rudimentary intelligence, learning, evolving, and communicating with itself to grow more powerful. “Basically, these little nanobots become self-organized and self-aware,” said Igor Aronson, Huck Chair Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, and Mathematics at Penn State, explaining the plot of Crichton’s book. A new model…inspired by Crichton’s novel, describes how biological or technical systems form complex structures equipped with signal-processing capabilities that allow the systems to respond to stimulus and perform functional tasks without external guidance… Taken individually, the material has no intelligence or functionality, but collectively, the material is capable of responding to its environment with a kind of emergent intelligence, Aronson explained: “What I’m working on is distributed artificial intelligence. Each element doesn’t have any intelligence, but once they come together, they’re capable of collective response and decision-making… We identify the decision-making machinery of the individual active agents as the driving mechanism for the collectively controlled self-organization of the system.” ( Multi-scale organization in communicating active matter , Nature Communications - open access.) Continuing in my own voice, I have fingernails, I am aware that I have fingernails, and I am aware that I am aware that I have fingernails…and they are to be found at the ends of my fingers. I enjoy recursive awareness (aka consciousness). I am aware that I enjoy recursive awareness, and I am even aware that I am aware that I enjoy recursive awareness. And where is that consciousness located? Not in my brain, not in my neurons, not even in my entire organism per se . Consciousness is an emergent property, an emergent property of a network, in my case, a neural network. It is a process; it is dependent on an underlying structure, but it is neither the structure itself nor the element of that structure. Awareness is always dynamic; it has no spatio-temporal location. The entities that form the structures that support awareness are located in spacetime, but the awareness itself is not. Awareness per se is spaceless and timeless, even though the object of that awareness occupies a region in spacetime. So, what’s changed? Only everything! It had been thought that only certain types of entities (e.g., neurons) could network to support awareness. Now it seems that that is not true. A network of entirely inanimate objects can support awareness. Awareness is not a property of entities, or even of organisms; it is a property of networks. Even the unholy trinity, ‘me, myself and I’, is not aware per se . I am simply the locus of a network that supports awareness. This, in turn, solves a major mystery: how is it that patients under anesthesia are not aware and not aware that they are not aware? For them, an entire region of spacetime has been obliterated. Why? Because the network they house is temporarily shut down. It’s a whole new world out there! And we will need new science and new philosophy to accommodate it. Turns out, this is a great time to be alive after all. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Share Previous Next

< Back Hidden Life An earlier “Thought” introduced “The Hidden Life of Trees”, the reflections of a career forester. The book focuses on communities of trees. In these communities, trees demonstrate the ability to communicate, to share resources, to perform selfless, eleemosynary acts, to recognize and care for progenitors as well as offspring. Are these activities enough for us to ascribe a type of consciousness to these communities? David Cowles An earlier “Thought” introduced “The Hidden Life of Trees”, the reflections of a career forester. The book focuses on communities of trees. In these communities, trees demonstrate the ability to communicate, to share resources, to perform selfless, eleemosynary acts, to recognize and care for progenitors as well as offspring. Are these activities enough for us to ascribe a type of consciousness to these communities? Now Netflix is showing a documentary called “Fantastic Fungi”. The role of fungus in the behavior of trees is well treated in the “Hidden Life” but this Netflix documentary focuses exclusively on that role. My lifetime has witnessed a new awareness of mental process and moral behavior beyond the “merely human world”. Prior to this, during the Age of Reason, the status of animals was reduced to that of automatons and the status of plants to that of simple machines. If we go back to even earlier times, however, we discover cultures that truly valued the non-human. In Biblical Judaism, for example, animals and cultivated lands enjoy all the same Sabbath protections as humans. Later, Hasidic Judaism divided being into 4 categories: human, animal, vegetable and inanimate. Each contains the same ‘divine spark’. Each can be reunited with God. In fact, the Hasidim refuse to recognize any sort of hierarchy among these 4 ontological categories. It has even been suggested that Judaism is the natural religion of ecology. Share Previous Next

< Back Ending Mark David Cowles May 9, 2024 “Can you help us choose the best ending for the Gospel of Mark?” I’m sure the Church didn’t intend it…but the Fathers may have given us the world’s first audience participation narrative . As you know, Scripture comes to us in pieces. It would be an exaggeration to say ‘on cocktail napkins and post-it-notes’, so let’s just say ‘multiple fragments from multiple sources’. Few, if any, are complete and faithful to the author’s every intended word. Yet they overlap enough that we believe we can form a largely accurate sense of the authors’ intentions and of events themselves. Anyway, this polyphony leads to some interesting dilemmas. Take the Gospel of Mark, for example. A narrative fit for any stage or screen, except one thing: we don’t know how it ends. We have multiple versions of the ending. Some versions are compatible with one another; others much less so. Suppose we suddenly find ourselves, dear readers, in the screening room at MGM, hob-bobbing with movie moguls (as we might have called them in the ‘50s). T he propeller-headed creatives have worked themselves into a frazzle; they can’t agree on how to end the soon-to-be released film, The Gospel of Mark . Multiple endings have been filmed, and we are being given final cut . I don’t know about you but I’m glad I didn’t have that 3rd martini at lunch today. So here it goes… On the morning of Jesus’ resurrection, three women visited the tomb where he had been laid. They found it empty, but they were reassured by an angel: “Go tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He goes before you into Galilee. There you will see him as he told you.’” (Mark 16: 7) Option A : “Cut! That’s a wrap!” What an ending! And without Steven Spielberg. This is the Hollywood Ending ; and it’s what the investors want. But let’s hear what others have to say first: Option B : Add some intrigue at the end, a twist; leave the audience on cliff’s edge: “Then they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had come on them; they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.” (Mark 16: 8a) OMG, is this how it all ends? “Not with a bang but a whimper.” (Eliot) Was the ‘greatest story ever told’…never told? It takes your breath away. I’m feeling vertigo and I’m writing this blasted piece. Surely, this is the Existential Ending . Of course, I think we know that things didn’t end just that way; the story was not lost. It was told, somehow, by someone. In fact, Mark is telling it right now – by writing his Gospel. But just imagine what might not have been! Option C : You could go the other way and clear up every possible ambiguity: “And in brief, they delivered all these instructions to Peter and his companions. Afterwards, Jesus himself sent out by them from east to west the sacred and imperishable message of eternal salvation.” (Mark 16: 8b) This is the Corporate Ending . Everything buttoned-up. No furrowed brows leaving this theater. Wake no patrons from their sleep! Option D : Or don’t end the story here at all. Extend the narrative. You’ve got a good thing going, why not milk it? This allows us even more options for the denouement . It will require a longer screenplay but here are a few ideas (Mark 16: 9-20): “Now when he had risen early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene…She went and told those who had been with him…(and) they disbelieved. “…He was revealed in another form to two of them as they walked on their way into the country. They…told the rest and they didn’t believe them either. “Afterwards he was revealed to the 11 as they sat at the table…He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation’…So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was received up into heaven and…they went out and preached everywhere…” This might be called the Religious Ending . It fills in earlier blanks, but it also gives the story a well-defined trajectory, pointing directly at the Kingdom of Heaven. Surprisingly, there is documentary support for each of these finales. There are translations that present all 4 versions as if they constituted a single, all encompassing record of events. This puts a stain on credulity. It is hard to see how Option B could be combined with Option C, or even Option D, for example. All versions agree on the text through Option A, so the question is whether the narrative should end there or whether the texts associated with Options B, C, and/or D should be added. What say you? Can you help us find an ending for the Gospel of Mark? In the poll below, choose Option A to end the story there or choose instead to add text from Options B, C, and/or D. Which ending works best for you? Record your preference right here , right now: Thank you for participating…and for reading Aletheia Today Magazine and Thoughts While Shaving . Keep the conversation going... 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Democracy 2024 David Cowles Oct 3, 2023 “Age is a wormhole that allows ‘experienced’ time travelers to live tomorrow today.” It’s Autumn 2023, and we’re all looking forward to the 2024 Presidential Campaign (or not). From today’s perspective, it looks as though this election will revolve around a single issue…and that issue will not be abortion. Since the 1960s, political scientists have written at length about the phenomenon of single issue voting . It probably began in earnest during the War in Vietnam. A brand-new voter at that time, I remember not caring whether a candidate was Republican or Democrat, just as long as they were opposed to the war. So, Johnson and Nixon, nyet; Romney and McCarthy, da! The 70s were dominated by two new single issues: abortion and forced busing. The Culture Wars were underway. Since then, nearly every election cycle has seen the emergence of new single issue voters, rallying around new, or recurring, causes. From 1968 to now, single issue voters have always been a vocal minority; but they have always spoken with just one voice: if the War was your issue, you were against it; same with abortion-on-demand and forced busing. 2024 will see single issue voting as well; but things will be different: (1) For the first time, single issue voters will make up the majority of the electorate; (2) for the first time, those single issue voters will speak with two voices, not one. Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that there will be more than one single issue; that’s certainly happened before. Nor am I saying that people will be split pro and con on the issue. The majority of 2024 voters will be guided by a single issue, and they will all be on the same side of that issue; yet they will speak with two voices. “How is this possible?” Well, you’re not the first person to ask that question! Let’s look ahead. On November 6, 2024, The New York Times will publish its post-election analysis; it will start with exit polling numbers on its front page; here’s how those numbers will read: What was the most important issue for you in this election? The future of American democracy – 66% Abortion – 15% The economy, taxes, spending, etc. – 12% Foreign policy – 7% Which party’s nominee did you vote for? Republican – 50% Democrat – 50% Then, on page 2, look for selected voter interviews; here are two representative samples: 1.“I voted for the Democrat. The Republicans resisted mail-in voting. They’re trying to roll back the Voting Rights Act to restore Jim Crowe. They lost a close election in 2020, but unlike the Democrats in 2000, 2004 and 2016, they refused to concede. Instead, they papered the courts with frivolous suits, made unsubstantiated claims of fraud, and besmirched the reputations of honest election workers. “Then, on January 6, 2021, incited by a Republican president, they descended on Washington and attempted to prevent the orderly transfer of power; they engaged in an unsuccessful insurrection. Their leader at that time is currently defending himself in 4 jurisdictions against 91 counts of criminal conduct. I usually vote Republican, but this time I had to vote for the Democrat; it was the only way I could safeguard our democracy.” 2. “I voted for the Republican. The Democrats are turning this country into a 3 rd world dictatorship. Before now, when has any former president been charged with crimes after leaving office? In the past, former presidents have looked forward to speaking tours, book deals, and ribbon cuttings. From now on, they’ll be looking forward to prison. If holding political office becomes a crime, only criminals will become politicians. “Everyone agrees that because of COVID-19, the 2020 election was unlike any other. Asking that the new procedures be thoroughly vetted, even retrospectively, makes sense. Ensuring the legitimacy of the outcome is an act of patriotism, not treason. “The Democrats have weaponized the Judicial Branch: Office of the AG, FBI, the lower courts. On the one hand, they want to defund the police, but on the other hand, they want to turn America into a police state. I usually vote Democrat, but this time I had to vote for the Republican; it was the only way I could safeguard our democracy.” Finally, on page 20, the Times will offer its editorial analysis: “Americans turned out in record numbers to protect and defend American democracy from its enemies, foreign and domestic; and then they split their votes evenly between the two parties.” Older people are often accused of living in the past. The reverse is true. Age is a wormhole that allows ‘experienced’ time travelers to live tomorrow today. That can be fun, but it can also be disconcerting. Enjoy your 2024! But don’t worry, I promise not to say, “I told you so.” Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.