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< Back Bakunin Nailed It “Writing at the same time as Kierkegaard, 10 years before Nietzsche, and 50 years before Heidegger and Sartre, Bakunin got it right.” David Cowles It’s Sunday night and I’m doing what every boy does on a Sunday night: I’m reading 19th century philosophy; tonight, it’s Mikhail Bakunin (1814 – 1876). Bakunin is not ordinarily grouped with the ‘Metaphysical GOATs’ (Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel). At best he is relegated to the 2nd tier, the cloud of social philosophers. In fact, however, Bakunin can be thought of as the St. Paul of Anarchism. He didn’t invent anarchism, but he systematized it and popularized it as an alternative to the sterile socialism of Mark and Engels. But even this is to sell Bakunin short. Turns out, he was a Metaphysician - First Class after all. For example, he wrote: • “Man is able to project himself in his thought, examining and observing himself like a strange eternal object.” Check : This is precisely what Nietzsche said could not be done. • “By lifting himself in thought above himself, and above the material world around him, he reaches the representation of perfect abstraction, the absolute void.” Check : This is Kierkegaard’s Abyss . This is what John saw when he broke the seventh seal. • “And this absolute (void) is nothing less than his capacity for (perfect) abstraction, which disdains all that exists and finds its repose in attaining complete negation. This is the ultimate limit of the highest abstraction of mind; this absolute nothingness is God.” Check : “I am not what I am and I am what I am not.” ( Sartre ) Nailed it! Writing at the same time as Kierkegaard, 10 years before Nietzsche, and 50 years before Heidegger and Sartre, Bakunin got it right. How so? We find ourselves ‘thrown’ (Heidegger) onto the ‘beach of being’, ignorant, defenseless, thoroughly lost. Our one goal is to survive! Survive now ( praxis )… and develop a strategy to survive long term ( gnosis ). We are surrounded by entities other than ourselves. We quickly see that our survival depends on understanding these entities, and ultimately, on influencing them. Viewing those entities through the prism of Indo-European language, we label them things (nouns) or events ( verbs ). ‘Things’ and ‘events’ are somewhat imprecise labels we affix to phenomena . We classify a phenomenon as a ‘thing’ or as an ‘event’ depending on whether we wish to call attention to its endurance (Parmenides’ Truth) or its transience (Heraclitus’ Flux): “Abide with me; fast falls the eventide.” We are like the away team on a future starship, dispatched to the surface of exoplanet XS325W to map its terrain – except, we are not mapping an exoplanet; we are mapping Being itself. Life is like a game of Battleship . It begins with a completely unconditioned ‘guess’. We note the results, and we add their coordinates to our emerging world map . This is my one and only random move. Every future move will be ‘informed’ by the results of all the moves that came before it. Gradually, we move from absolute ignorance to something approaching certain knowledge. As we push the buttons and pull the levers that constitute ‘the world’, we are simultaneously mapping the terrain. We call this ‘science’. I’m hungry, I cry, I get fed. Now I associate crying with satiety, and I hypothesize a causal relationship between the two: post hoc ergo propter hoc . For the rest of my life, I will test and refine this hypothesis and look to extend it to other ordered pairs (of data) I uncover along the way. Needs multiply: feed me, change me, sooth me. My gestures (crying) modulate. Crying works for this but not for that . A certain ‘style of crying’ seems better correlated with a certain result. My map of the world is gaining definition. As I get older, my crying becomes more nuanced and less obvious, but make no mistake about it, I’m still crying, right up to the very end. Ah, the gift of life! Our survival is at stake from the moment of our birth (or conception). My first awareness is an awareness of discomfort, if not pain. In the language of the existentialists, we are the being whose being is always in doubt. Our being is inseparable from our mortality. I resort to a series of random gestures in hopes that something will make this pain go away; et voilà, something does! Or does it? Have I discovered causality (Laplace)…or coincidence (Hume)? I will need to test my proposed correlation until I am so sure of the causal link that I am willing to ‘bet my life on it’. Once satisfied, I can fill in my map with its first data point, an ordered pair (X = my behavior; Y = my comfort). Over the next 30,000 days or so, I’ll discover, test, and map many more such correlations. Primal awareness is strangely complex: I am aware of phenomena that I classify as ‘self’ and I am aware of phenomena that I classify as ‘not self’. From my perspective, this is the primal distinction (not darkness and light as in Genesis ); but by itself, it does not even come close to capturing the experience of being human. What’s missing? Me! I’m missing from this model. I am aware of the phenomena, ‘self’ and ‘not-self’, precisely because I am neither . If I were ‘self’, then there would be no need, or even function, for ‘not-self’. ‘Self’ would form a self-contained universe, and we could have no knowledge (or need) of anything outside it. If ‘I’ am an element of ‘self’, then I am perfectly redundant and therefore my very existence is a violation of Occam’s Razor: I am de trop . On the other hand, it is hard to ignore the intuition that there is something fundamentally different between observing and being observed. Objects are observed; subjects observe. Granting for the moment that there is nothing more to conscious awareness than the operation of a network of neurons and excluding the possible existence of some mysterious, spiritual anti substance, it is still difficult not to notice the difference between a subject’s awareness of an event and the objective event itself. “They’re not even the same sort of thing.” A world ‘with me’ and a world ‘without me’ would be exactly the same world; but ‘to be’ is not to be the same but to be different, novel, unique, to matter, to have consequences, to leave footprints in the sand. According to Gregory Bateson and Alfred North Whitehead, ‘to be’ is to be different and to make a difference. Were ‘I’ to be merely an element of ‘self’, I would not matter, I would make no difference, my being would have no consequences, and the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life , could have never been made. Quelle domage! Even so, I think it is safe to say that a majority of contemporary philosophers, scientists, etc. believe we live in just such a world – a world in which ‘I’ is an element of ‘self’. I say ‘believe’ because for many reductionists, mechanists, positivists and naïve realists, the proposition ‘I ɛ S’ is a matter of deep, almost religious, conviction: “It is this way because it has to be this way , even if it’s not!” We cling to our ‘enlightened’ secular model even though it predicts a universe that is frozen, lifeless, devoid of all novelty, a world in which Achilles loses a road race to a tortoise – in other words, a universe that has virtually nothing in common with our world. The human experience is dialectic: I am aware of ‘self’ ( thesis ), I am aware of ‘not-self’ ( antithesis) and I am aware of ‘being aware’ of self and not-self ( synthesis ). Neti, neti (Sanskrit): not this, not that, the keyword being ‘not’. I am by being-not and being-not is a form of abstraction. When I am ‘not this ball’, I am abstracting from the ball its location, momentum, and sensory appearance. ‘To be’ I must have something ‘not to be’. I cannot not-be ‘ball’ per se because ‘ball’ is a noumenon, a Platonic Idea, not a phenomenon. According to Kant, I ‘kan’t know’ a noumenon; I can only know its phenomenal aspect. Therefore, I cannot not be or not be ‘ball’ per se ; I can only ‘not be’ the ball’s various characteristics. To abstract is to de-concretize , and so “perfect abstraction” would result in an “absolute void”. I am the relentless spirit of restlessness at the heart of Being. As such, I “disdain all that exists”. I ‘negate it’ and it is only in such negation that I find any measure of “repose”. (Bakunin) “Eternal rest ( gnosis ) grant unto them, O Lord, and may the perpetual light shine upon them.” Rest in peace is not a final farewell. It is a battle cry: “Be Human!” 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 . Previous Next

< Back The Nature of Time David Cowles Confining events within a single order of magnitude reinforces our tendency to categorize events as past, present, or future. After all, if a quantum of experience can be no more than one second long, almost everything must seem past or future from that perspective. At first glance, our lives seem to be strings of bead-like events. No sooner have we experienced one sensation, thought, feeling, or action than another takes its place. We have a vague sense that we can string these events along a timeline and group them as past , present , or future . But on further reflection, it is clear that this idea is absurd. Events don’t succeed one another like conscripts boarding a warship; they overlap. I am all at once aware of many sensations, thoughts, feelings, and acts; it’s hardly ever clear when one stops, and another begins. Events are not points…or beads. Events have duration and different events have different durations, and the duration of one event necessarily overlaps with the duration of at least one other event. The human nervous system is attuned to events that fall within a certain range, i.e., events with a duration of somewhere between one second and one-tenth of one second. If an event has a duration of less than one-tenth of a second, we normally don’t register it at all, unless perhaps as undifferentiated background. If an event has duration of more than a second, we normally try to break it up into multiple, sequential events. Our naïve sense that events normally last a second or less has everything to do with our perceptual & cognitive apparatus and absolutely nothing to do with the nature of events themselves. Whatever the world may be, we experience it in one second bursts . There is absolutely no theoretical reason why event duration should be confined within a single order of magnitude. On the contrary, we know that there are events with durations orders of magnitude shorter than a second and there is no reason not to assume that there are other events with durations orders of magnitude longer than a second. Confining events within a single order of magnitude reinforces our tendency to categorize events as past, present, or future. After all, if a quantum of experience can be no more than one second long, almost everything must seem past or future from that perspective. We need to ask a different question: How do the myriad events that constitute our lives relate to one another? Are they always laid out more or less neatly along a timeline, like clothes drying in the sun, or are more complex species of ordering possible? It turns out that any two events may relate to one another in 6 different ways: (1) They may be tangent (i.e., sequential) (2) They may overlap . (3) One may be embedded in the other. A model universe that is connected in these three ways and only these three ways does not fully account for the phenomena of connectedness (solidarity) that we experience in everyday life, or in the laboratory, so we so must continue. In these first three modes, connectivity is a function of overlap: at a point, across a region, or in the entirety. Therefore, in these modes, connected entities do not require space or time to operate, and we do not need a concept of space or time to understand them. On the other hand, the connectivity delivered by these three modes, even working together, is fragile, and in my view, too fragile to account for the persistent and enduring universe we experience. This level of connectivity lacks redundancy (and therefore it lacks resiliency.) It can neither correct itself nor reinforce itself. The entire House of Cards is always ‘just one false negative’ away from total collapse. From here on, though, things get more interesting. The final three modes of connectivity provide the glue needed to hold our world together and allow it to function as an organism: (4) Two events (A and B) may be disjoint, but both events may overlap a common third event (C). This is the special case of relatedness that single-handedly leads to the popular notion of “past, present, future”: when three events are connected in this way, one is commonly, if arbitrarily, thought to be in the past and one in the future of the third event (the so-called present). In this mode, A and B do not overlap. Therefore, A and B do not directly influence one another. A and B both overlap C. Each potentially influences C and both are potentially influenced by C. Therefore, indirectly, A and B may influence one another after all, through the mediation of C. Let’s do a deeper dive! The phenomenon of time ‘happens’ when and only when A influences B and B influences C and no other ‘influential pathways’ are operative. No reflection, no recursion, and no reciprocity; no 3 R’s. But there is no a priori reason to assume that influences are linear. For example, influences couldrecur (as in a loop ) . A could influence B and B could influence C and C could influence A. “Karma is a b*tch!” In this model, A, B, C together constitute a self-organized unity, a triangle, an uber-event snatched from the ‘flow’ of linear time. Perhaps this is the origin of ‘societies,’ groupings of events (or entities) that function, at least sometimes, as one single coordinated entity. So-called societies include the persistent and enduring groupings we know as objects . This phenomenon is what we call recursion ; it lies at the heart of what we call identity . Or perhaps, while A is influencing B, B is busy influencing A. This phenomenon is what we call reciprocation , and it lies at the heart of what we call relationship . Finally, as A is influencing B, A may be influencing itself in the exact same way. “What I do unto others, I do unto myself.” This phenomenon is what we call reflection ; it lies at the heart of what we call growth . In this last case, A’s relation to B is also A’s relation to itself. It is the contention of this essay that events are ultimately connected like the vertices of a Platonic solid (e.g., a tetrahedron), not like points on a line. Every event (node) connects with every other event, exhibiting multiple forms of connectivity in the process. Our naïve concept of linear connectedness is valid only when confined to each individual edge of the Platonic solid, and then only when the connecting line segment is viewed as a vector. Linear connectedness, if it’s even a thing, is a very special and limiting case of the broader, more inclusive, reality. Imagine a child sketching a Tetrahedron on a piece of paper. She starts at a point (call it A) and draws a line segment (vector) from point A to point B. Then she draws another vector from point B to point C and so on until all 4 vertices are connected with each other by these vectors. So, what’s wrong with this? Well, first, does anyone really think this is how Tetrahedra come to be in nature ? Second, note that she cannot complete the Tetrahedron without (1) lifting her pencil off the page or (2) retracing (and reversing) a step. This should set off alarm bells everywhere. Nature does not lift its pencil off the page, nature does not retrace its steps, and nature does not reverse itself. (5) #5 is a more generalized version of #4. We're just extending the notions of #4 to physical fields. Now we’re talking connected and disjoint light cones instead of mere regions. If there is no single event or string of events (C) that connects the fields associated with two disjoint events (A, B), then A and B are said to be simultaneous : in the language of physics, they “lie outside each other’s light cone.” But even simultaneous events may enjoy a species of connectedness. Two events (A, B) may lie outside each other’s light cones, but both may lie in the light cone of a common third event (C). In this case, we can say that A and B are simultaneous with respect to each other but not with respect to C. (6) Finally, two events that lie outside each other’s light cones, which in turn are not mediated by any third light cone, may nonetheless constitute a single event. The two events are said to be entangled . The existence of this mode of connectivity (‘spooky action at a distance’) was a matter of conjecture until John Bell proved it in 1964. “Bell’s Theorem,” as it’s called, has since been verified experimentally by Alan Aspect (1971) and many others. Is this list of possible modes of connection exhaustive? Suppose there are two events that do not enjoy any of these modes of connectedness. What can we say about such an event pair? One thing only: we must say that no such event pair exists ! A and B do not exist for one another. Looking more closely at these modes of relatedness, we can see that they fundamentally resolve into just two modes: Serial Connectedness (#1) and Embedded Connectedness (#3). The remaining modes are hybrids of #1 and #3. This prompts further reflection. Is one mode of connectedness more fundamental, more substructural than the other? Is one a special case of the other? Does one ‘emerge’ from the other? If we could find a phenomenon that exhibited one mode of connectivity and excluded the other mode, that would go a long way toward establishing one mode as the more general, more substructural mode. I believe we can do just that: The 6th mode of connectedness allows two disjoint events (A and B) to function as a single event (C). The phenomenon of quantum entanglement described here requires as an absolute condition that the two disjoint events not connect (serially) with any other events. Any sort of serial connectedness would abort the embedding event, but without an embedding event, the two embedded events would not exist in a common universe (since they would lack any connection to one another). Therefore, without quantum entanglement, Universe as we know it would not exist. Which is what John Bell proved, QED . While we can observe the effects of quantum entanglement only under very specialized laboratory conditions, we should not conclude from that, that such events are rare. I would speculate that the Universe consists of more event pairs with “entangled connectedness” than with any other form of serial or embedded connectedness; but that is mere conjecture. In any case, the existence of entangled connectedness is sufficient to prove that serial connectivity is not a universal characteristic of all events in the Universe. Embedded connectivity, therefore, must be the more general case of connectivity, and, therefore, the sub-structural mode! Imagine that! A mode of connectedness not thought of before 1900 and unproven before 1964, turns out to be the primordial mode of connectedness across the universe. Where does this leave time ? It is a particular manifestation, linear and serial, of a much more varied concept of connectedness. That is the nature of time! 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. Previous Next

< Back Pronouns David Cowles Jul 23, 2021 Today, we are all about our pronouns. This incidental part of speech has suddenly replaced the noun and the verb as the focus of popular, and linguistic, attention. Growing up in the ‘60s, we were accustomed to asking one another, “What is your sign?” Now, 55 years later, “What are your pronouns?” has become the ice breaker of choice. Even some business colleagues of mine have embedded “my pronouns…” into their electronic email signatures. Today, we are all about our pronouns. This incidental part of speech has suddenly replaced the noun and the verb as the focus of popular, and linguistic, attention. Growing up in the ‘60s, we were accustomed to asking one another, “What is your sign?” Now, 55 years later, “What are your pronouns?” has become the ice breaker of choice. Even some business colleagues of mine have embedded “my pronouns…” into their electronic email signatures. 100 years ago, someone else was focused on pronouns. Jewish theologian and existentialist philosopher, Martin Buber. His seminal work, “I and Thou”, understood the world as a network of relationships. He divided those relationships into two categories: ”I – it” and “I – Thou”. I – it relationships are all about the I, the subject. The it is pure object. We usually have an I – it relationship with the canned goods on a supermarket shelf. Unfortunately, we often extend that relationship to the human beings who work in that supermarket. Imperialism and colonialism are paradigms of I – it relationships. Derek Chauvin had an I – it relationship with George Floyd. An I – Thou relationship, on the other hand, eliminates the subject-object duality. It posits the absolute equality of the I and the Thou. In fact, it requires that we see ourselves in the other and that the other sees him/herself in us. Buber made a great contribution to Western philosophy, but I would go much further. “My pronouns” are it and Thou…not I or me. That’s because when I enter into an I – it relationship, it immediately becomes an it – it relationship. The object of the relationship (e.g. canned goods) transforms the subject of the relationship (me) into an object, into an ‘it’. Conversely, when I enter into an I – Thou relationship, I am immediately transformed into a Thou. 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 Thrown by Heidegger “Of course, I have no name, no face, no identity; I belong nowhere.” David Cowles It’s September 4, 1947, and an amniotic ocean has just disgorged a living organism that I will eventually come to call “me.” Waves of time and space have thrown me, naked, choking, almost drowned, onto a desolate ‘beach’ (it’s not Maui). I am dazed and confused and utterly helpless. Immediately, I learn that I am not alone; there are other organisms on this ‘beach’ as well. At first, awareness of the others terrifies me, but very quickly I learn that, for the most part, these organisms mean me no harm. In fact, some of them actually seem to be taking care of me. Job One , obviously, is survival. Even a newborn baby knows that much! Apparently, for now at least, I must depend for that survival on the kindness of others . That said, I must make sure that those ‘others’ continue to care for me. I must do everything in my power to hold their attention and to strengthen our bond. In short, I must be cute. Survival strategy in place, it’s time for Job Two : achieving and maintaining a general sense of wellbeing. This requires an overarching sense of security (above) and the discovery of a lifestyle that more or less consistently delivers an acceptable ratio of pleasure to pain. I’m not yet six months old, but I’m already hard at work on Job Two. When adults say that a baby is learning to comfort itself, that’s me working on Job Two. With Job Two comes my first intuition that we are not just Skinner Boxes and that our world is governed neither by stimulus-response (physiology) nor by cause-and-effect (physics). There’s something more going on…but what? The alternating waves of pain and pleasure I’ve experienced since birth are perhaps not the final word, and as part of Job One, I’ve already learned some techniques for managing pain and enhancing pleasure. Job Two stimulates the first dim awareness of something beyond just survival and pleasure: other, less obvious threads, connecting events. To achieve a general sense of wellbeing, I must travel deep into the lair of the others . Time then for Job Three : “Get a job!” At 18 months of age? You bet. I already intuit that ‘cute’ is not going to get me through. If I am to survive long term, post-cute, I need to find a way to fit into others’ lives and enhance them. I want to rebuild my relationships on a more reciprocal foundation. This is the role of roles ! From birth, I prepare a face to meet the faces that I meet (Eliot). #1 – ‘cute face’; but that only takes me so far. I quickly learn that I need different faces for different people and different contexts. Potentially, at least, I can be a unique someone for each someone I meet. But as I age arithmetically, my circle of interlocutors grows geometrically, and my database of social interactions grows exponentially. I can no longer afford to prepare a face de nuevo for every face I meet. “There will be time, there will be time”(Eliot) …until there isn’t. It’s a dilemma, a dilemma society resolves with something called roles . On paper, I am a unique person every time I interact with another. But IRL, many of these unique personae overlap, sometimes massively. They have elements in common. When that commonality reaches a certain level, a Gestalt occurs, and suddenly, I’m lumping those personae together into roles . A pile has become a heap; a stand of trees has become a forest. A role is a set of personae , generalized to cover a range of contexts and a myriad of interlocutors. It is the calcification of habit. Encouraged by our socio-economic system, the average person is playing a half-dozen different roles during any one time period. Here are a few of the overlapping roles I got to ‘try out’ as a child: Cute Baby Curious Toddler Performer on-Demand Friend Good Kid Playmate Student Junior Athlete As I’ve aged, I’ve added a host of new roles to my repertoire: Student Athlete Political Activist Seeker Employee Employer Customer Salesperson Spouse Parent Homme d’affaires Bon Vivant Grandparent Retiree Writer So yes, I need roles. Roles are levers; they allow me to manipulate the world, to navigate it. They are octagonal keys that fit perfectly into octagonal locks. Roles are massive data compressors; they allow me to convert a welter of raw experience into small, repeatable, and scalable snippets of code. Just as importantly, if I’m honest, my roles allow me brief and shallow respites from the sheer terror of being alive. They give me an instant sense of Identity and Belonging . I have a place now in that giant Calder mobile that is the world. I make a difference in that world; it would be different without me. I imagine it would be very different. Like Atlas, I have the weight of the world, quite literally, on my shoulders. I am one of the ‘charms’ that keeps the mobile du monde balanced. Whatever this is, we’re all in this together. Knowing I’m not alone gives me another unwarranted but still very welcome sense of relief. I have an identity at last; finally, I belong. I am no longer a piece of beach litter, crumpled up and thrown away thoughtlessly onto sand. I am ‘someone’, a tapestry woven from my roles! Yet, at the end of the day, when the bedroom is darkened and the ceiling looms lid-like above me, I know I am lying to myself…and you. I am not ‘Cute Baby’, I am not ‘Student Athlete’, I am not ‘Writer.’ Of course, I do baby-like, student-like, athlete-like, and writer-like things, but I am none of these personae. Dilemma : I am pretending to be someone (i.e. a nexus of roles)…and I seem to be getting away with it. My act is convincing. The others recognize me as one of their own, and as someone with something unique to contribute. Accordingly, life is a little less terrifying now; in fact, it is sometimes even fun . So take the win! The flip side of security is complacency. The ‘win’ is bad faith . By taking it, I officially give up my quest to figure out ‘what the hell’s going on here’; but if I reject it, I am doomed to live out my life alone, as an ontological exile. Well, the choice is easy, isn’t it? “I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; am an attendant lord, one who will do well to swell a progress…” (Eliot) I have to get by after all – pay the mortgage, pick up the kids from school, take the family to the Isle of Wight for a summer holiday. I don’t have time for nonsense. I’m ok being Atlas, holding up the world, but not Jesus, saving the world; I’m too frightened. But for a tortured few, the trade-off itself, the bad faith , is more than they can bear. I’m thinking Socrates, Nietzsche, and of course, Jesus himself…but not me. I put on my roles each day as a police officer puts on her uniform. We both know that we are not what our uniforms denote. But wearing those uniforms sure helps us get through our day. Plus, if an identity isn’t working for me, no problem, I’ll just try on another one instead! I can keep trying on uniforms until I get it right. The process is what society calls, “Finding yourself.” The trouble is, it never comes right. It’s not that you’re not this role or that role, it is that you aren’t any role; you are not a role at all! Oh, life would be a heck of a lot easier if we could just be the people that we’re pretending to be. Imagine that! We are like human babies raised by wolves. We don’t fully realize that we are not in fact wolves. It’s going to be a rude awakening when we find out…if we ever do. Caveat Lector : If you prefer to think of yourself as a full-fledged member of the wolf pack, then stop reading this article now…and thanks for visiting. For the rest of you, personae and roles are props we adopt to help us get through life. Unfortunately, most of us come to believe that we are those props. My mask becomes my face. Even so, the reward for believing is just too great to pass up: ‘a temporary but pervasive sense of wellbeing’! Sound familiar? Perhaps it is Identity that is the opiate of masses. But again, I take the win! I trade truth for peace. I’m pretending to be some pretty interesting people, after all. If only I could actually be one of them! But I know I can’t. All the booze, drugs, and sex in the world can’t make me forget for more than a few minutes at a time that I am not any of the people I pretend to be. Philosophers say that the purpose of life is personal happiness . I sure hope they’re wrong because I can never be ‘happy’! Not that I’m unhappy; I’m certainly not miserable. These ‘states of mind’ just aren’t in my repertoire. They’re not ontologically compatible with who I am. My avatars are happy, or not, but not me. I feel my avatar being happy, but I quickly catch myself. I remember that I am not the one who is happy. I realize that I am watching the equivalent of a ‘movie’ of myself being happy. Speaking of movies, I’m watching Gone with the Wind . I’m heavily invested in the characters. I let myself feel their joy and their pain. Then I recall that nothing’s actually happening…except me eating popcorn. I am watching images ‘painted’ on celluloid and then projected onto a giant screen in front of me. The images are of Civil War Tara . The story is drawn from history but the characters, the plot and the dialog are 100% invented by the author, Margaret Mitchell, who knew neither the Civil War nor me. Nothing that’s happening on the screen has anything to do with me or with anyone who lived during the War for that matter. The relationship we have with characters from fiction is very similar to the relationship we have with our avatars, ‘characters from our own fiction.’ We yearn to belong to a larger social group: family, community, country, congregation, union, pub team, Man U fan club, etc., and avatars get us in the door. They are like the fake ID I had in college. And we covet specific identities within those groups – not so much personally chosen identities, rather sub-roles we can comfortably step into to support in an identifiable way the overall ‘mission’ of the group. If I cannot invent my own identity, I am not above going with a store bought costume. Bottom line : everybody wants you to know their name! ( Cheers ) Nobody wants to be anonymous. When you call me by name, you testify to the fact that I have an identity and that I belong in this world. What a (superficial) relief! But of course, I have no name, no face, no identity; I belong nowhere. My mother said it best, “Be somebody!” Worst advice she ever gave me! Sorry, Mom, somebody is precisely what I can never be. In the idiom of Jean-Paul Sartre, I am not who I am, and I am who I am not. This sense of disjunction accompanies every experience we have. You are none of the people you’re trying to be. You’ll never be a wolf, no matter how much you wish you were. You’ll never be your parents’ child, you’ll never be your spouse’s spouse, you’ll never be your children’s parent. I am sitting in a Paris café, sipping Beaujolais Nouveau, watching the world pass by. What could be better? Surely, now I am happy. Well, in fact, no! Not that wine sipping isn’t good; it is. It’s just that I am not that café-sitting wine sipper; I am watching that café-sitter and I wish him well, but he’s not me. I am not sipping wine; I am watching myself sip wine. I am experiencing the wine-sipping through the prism of my thoughts: “How marvelous to be sipping wine in Paris! I must introduce X to this experience. If only it was a little less breezy! I wonder how this year’s vintage compares with last. I must make plans to come again next year at this same time. I wonder if they’ll come a time when I can’t come to Paris anymore. If only the waiter hadn’t put a pea underneath my seat cushion.” I don’t know who I am, but I do know I am not the one sipping wine, but I can’t let on. Sharing my angst would be like donning a dunce cap…or worse, like being an artist. Now I’ve discovered my ‘role of roles’, my uber-role : it’s reinforcing the roles of others. “Isn’t this marvelous?” I offer the table next to me, as I shoot a selfie to a few friends back in the States. Everybody needs to know, “This is a good as it gets!” And it is…for café-sitting wine-sippers. Imagine yourself at a table next to mine. You hear me singing the praises of Paris wine sipping. Of course, you’re having your own disjunctive experience which you dare not own up to. Hearing me only alienates you further from your actuality. “What’s wrong with me,” you think, “that I cannot enjoy this experience the way the guy next to me is experiencing it?” (Pretending to experience it, that is.) We are all part of a global enterprise to build the World Wide Wrinkle , a membrane that separates all of us from ourselves, a distortion on the edge of Being that prevents us from ever seeing what’s below the surface. No matter what experiences the universe cooks up for me, I won’t experience any of them directly. I will experience myself watching myself having those experiences. My avatar experiences; I watch! I’m not unhappy; it’s just that I’m not the sort of thing that can be happy. I’m not the sort of thing that has experiences. I am the sort of thing that watches someone (myself?) having experiences. I am not a noun; I am not a verb (apologies to Buckminster Fuller). Syntactically, I am some sort of ‘reflexive particle’, an indicator that the proposition in question is recursive. But in truth, I am not any ‘part of speech’; I am the phenomenon of recursion itself. “It recurs; therefore, I am.” Unfortunately, it took me decades to discover this. 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 Summer 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back When All Is Not So Merry and Bright Donna Bucher "Hidden grief whispers loud among us, especially at Christmas, as we navigate losses too often dismissed or unacknowledged—but even in the pain, there’s a gift waiting to be unwrapped." The simple task of writing Christmas cards usually fills me with joy as I pour heartfelt words onto each glitter-edged card. But this year, like a sudden cloud blocking the sun, sadness lingers over my desk. The hidden grief that surfaces at Christmas reminds me that not everything is merry and bright. Grief, in its many forms, visits countless homes during the holidays. Some mourn the absence of loved ones lost to death, their places at the table empty and deeply missed. But another kind of grief—a quieter, often unacknowledged one—settles in many hearts. This is disenfranchised grief , a sadness that goes unnamed and unvalidated, leaving its sufferers struggling to understand or express their pain. Disenfranchised grief often arises from losses that society dismisses or deems less significant because they aren’t tied to death. Losses like the death of a pet, divorce, estranged relationships, miscarriage, health challenges, or job loss carry the same weight of sorrow. Yet those who experience these losses often receive little support, their pain unseen. At its core, grief is a natural response to brokenness in all its forms. But when left unacknowledged, it becomes a hidden burden, silencing its sufferers and forcing them to pretend all is well. Pen poised in hand, I pause. My thoughts drift to Christmases past—filled with carols, laughter, and joy. Yet the present feels heavy. Empty places at the table, missing names in my address book, and the deep clefts in my heart overshadow my attempts to write. Hidden grief, like the ghost of Christmas past, casts a shadow over the season’s promises of joy and togetherness. This grief is not limited to death. It includes the silent sorrow of wayward children, broken relationships, or the sting of health and financial struggles. These hidden losses are just as real, and the pain they bring is just as profound. My training in grief counseling helped me recognize hidden grief, both in others and in myself. Acknowledging and naming this grief gave it meaning, allowing healing to begin. I learned that to heal, I first had to validate my own sorrow—something no one else could do for me. When I brought my hidden grief to God, I discovered His ability to redeem even the deepest pain. Embracing grief meant seeing it from His perspective, as part of a greater story. Like unwrapping a beautifully wrapped gift, I had to tear through the layers of pain to uncover the treasure within. The holidays often heighten the longing for beauty, harmony, and joy. When life feels fragmented—when relationships are strained, health falters, or finances fall short—it’s as though graffiti has been scrawled across the perfect picture we imagine for Christmas. But even in these moments, God meets us. The same God who chose to enter our broken world through a lowly birth and a life marred by rejection understands grief intimately. Isaiah 53:3 describes Jesus as “despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” Though we often associate this verse with His death, it also speaks to His birth and life. Born into circumstances surrounded by shame and gossip, Jesus bore the weight of grief from the very beginning. In the same way, our hidden grief often carries a sense of shame—whether from wayward children, divorce, or financial struggles. But God sees beyond these labels. He understands every sorrow, even when others do not. If your Christmas feels broken, joyless, or incomplete, remember that God holds you in your pain. Just as torn wrapping paper reveals a gift, suffering often reveals something valuable. Embracing grief allows us to see what remains with fresh eyes: the love we shared, the memories we cherish, and the hope for what lies ahead. Here are some ways to navigate hidden grief during the holidays: Acknowledge your grief : Recognize that grief is a natural response to loss and brokenness, whether tied to death or not. Allow yourself to grieve : Even if others don’t understand your sorrow, give yourself permission to process your feelings. Accept the loss : Whether it’s the loss of a relationship, independence, or health, grief cannot heal until the loss is acknowledged. Say goodbye : Create rituals to honor what you’ve lost. Write a farewell letter, display a meaningful photo, or journal your memories. Cherish hearts over presence : For those grieving relational losses, hold onto love in prayer, memory, or small reminders, even if the person is absent. Invite God into your pain : Though grief often feels isolating, God fully understands and wants to meet you in your sorrow. Ultimately, grief—no matter how hidden—can be a pathway to greater intimacy with God. By embracing it, we allow Him to transform our perspective, helping us cherish what we’ve lost while holding loosely to earthly treasures. Through grief, we learn to hope again. Donna is a passionate creative, writer, poet, speaker, retired missionary, CASA volunteer, experienced counselor and hospice and palliative care support personnel. Founder of Serenity in Suffering blog, and author of the Serenity in Suffering newsletter on Substack, where she shares articles, resources and counseling designed to help readers grow personally and find spiritual intimacy with Christ; ultimately finding purpose in the trials they face. Return to Yuletide 2024 Previous Next

< Back How to Age Mathematically David Cowles Nov 12, 2024 “The last 20 years of your calendar life will only amount to c.10% of your experienced life…but you don’t see that coming!” Many children first encounter arithmetic when they struggle to understand the concept of age . When Aunt Mary asks, as she always does, “And how old are you, young man?” I can confidently hold up 3 fingers. (BTW, that gets me half way to a PhD!) Later, I will wrestle with the fact that even though I get older every year, I never seem to catch up to my siblings. How come? Eventually, the wonder of numbers will likely give way to drudgery of drill but the question of how we age through time will continue to draw us in. By the time you hit double digits, you’ve already noticed that the insufferably long ‘year’ is slowly getting shorter. Thank God for that ! I couldn’t bear to wait another 10 years to turn 20. Fortunately, I won’t have to. I can purchase the future with discounted dollars (i.e. shorter years). At 12 you put up a picture of Einstein on your bedroom wall. Time dilation is your best friend! After all, your life is dominated by a single subliminal goal: getting to the age of 21 as quickly as possible. BTW, your parents share that goal for you; they just add ‘and as safely as possible’. If you’re precocious…or just posh…you may have already learned that time flows more slowly in the presence of stronger gravitational fields, e.g. in the neighborhood of a singularity (black hole). Your conception and birth is analogous to such a singularity. Time seems to flow more slowly close to that singularity and speed up as age distances you from it. This process continues through your 20’s and into your 30’s as you pursue the 5 Ps of contemporary Western ‘personhood’: pay, pad, pension (401k), partner (significant other), and pet (and/or kids). As you drift, semi-conscious on your best days, towards Milestone 40, you may feel a tug: Could time possibly be moving a little too quickly? But not until your 40th birthday will you feel the first real jolt: “I have lived half of my expected lifetime!” Such a thought could be disconcerting, but we don’t allow that! Instead, you’re quickly comforted, “It took forever (quite literally) for me to get here so ‘same again’ is Ok by me.” Oh, the delusions of the Middle Aged! At the age of 40, 40 years = a lifetime (1.0). At age 80, 40 years = a half-life (0.5). Therefore by age 40, you have already lived 2/3rds of your experiential life: 1.0/(1.0 + 0.5) = 66.7%. There is no ‘same again’; that ship has long since sailed. What a rip-off! But if this is so for everyone, if this is the human condition , why isn’t everybody in the streets banging pots and pans? Nature is way too clever for that ! The future seems to linger, shimmering out there on time’s horizon. As you move toward it, it seems to recede at a similar pace. Crossing Detroit’s 40 Mile Road, you get serious about your contracting lifeline. You gaze at the horizon, expecting it to meet you half way like the ‘Prodigal Father’; it doesn’t! In fact, it doesn’t seem to get any closer at all, no matter how long you walk toward it. Danger, Will Robinson, danger! It’s a trick! Don’t fall for it! The future is not hanging out on a cosmic corner; it is hurtling toward you…and at an accelerating pace; the last 20 years of your calendar life will only amount to c.10% of your ‘experienced life’…but you don’t see that coming! Not your fault; you are caught up in a mirage. Imagine you are trekking in the Sahara as is your custom. You look to the horizon and imagine you see your destination: The Great Oasis! But it’s a trompe d’oeil . As you approach the end of your life, time itself seems to inflate. You feel it: “…There will be time, there will be time to…murder and create, and time for all the works and days of hands…” (Eliot). But there won’t be! In fact, ‘ Now is the hour of our death.’ Unless you’re very fortunate, or read Aletheia Today , you will wake up one morning surprised to find that the mirage has vanished and that the singularity (death) is much, much closer than you’d imagined, upon you in fact. Now it’s too late to save yourself. Relax and prepare to be elongated into a lonesome strand of spaghetti. What a way to go! Plus, the orientation of your ‘temporal field’ (like Earth’s ‘magnetic field’) suddenly flips. From birth your vision has been future oriented; without realizing it, you’ve understood the past in terms of that future: “I go to school to get a job, etc.” but you don’t realize that what you’re really saying is “I live to be spaghettified.” Now that you’ve crossed the event horizon, however, things are reversed; your vision is directed toward the past. From here on you’ll understand the future in terms of that past: your legacy! Without meaning to, you’re literally tying up loose ends. Life has become estate planning. Borrowing from Proust, the future no longer creates time; it redeems it. You’re searching for some nugget of Goodness that might allow you to trick your way past St. Peter. Good luck with that! But in the meantime, “Wake up...please.” Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 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.

“Cosmologists cannot rely on science any more than astronomers can rely on religion. There can be no successful TOE (‘Theory of Everything’) without both. ….” < Back Is Christology a TOE David Cowles Sep 1, 2024 “Cosmologists cannot rely on science any more than astronomers can rely on religion. There can be no successful TOE (‘Theory of Everything’) without both. ….” “It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you’re ‘a good person, kind to others and respectful of the environment’. At the end of the day, that’s all any religion can ask, and you don’t need religion for that .” I’m guessing that the majority of Europeans and North Americans agree with this proposition, even if they don’t say so publicly. But we ask a lot more of our religion than that! While we ‘trust’ science to tell us how the Universe came to be as it is, we rely on religion to tell us why . For 300+ years, we have imagined that science and religion were enemies, that their models of reality were incompatible. Nothing could be farther from the truth. They address completely different questions, and they desperately need one another to fill each other’s gaps. In the words of Ezra Pound, “The grove needs an altar.” Cosmologists cannot rely on science any more than astronomers can rely on religion. There can be no successful TOE (‘Theory of Everything’) without both. The specific ‘facts’ uncovered ( aletheia ) by science need to be positioned in an overall conceptual framework ( logos ) that science alone cannot provide. Phrases like ‘Big Bang’ and ‘Negative Vacuum Pressure’ cannot satisfy our deepest longings. If the question, why is there something rather than nothing? has meaning…and an answer…that answer can only be found in Metaphysics, religion’s first cousin once removed. Science tells us that we , I mean our ‘bodies’, each consist of 30 trillion independent life forms called cells . By comparison, only 8 billion human beings are alive today. Likewise, a total of 100 billion human beings have lived since homo sapiens evolved. By normal life expectancy, 100 trillion cells will have participated in forming your ‘body’. These cells are the direct descendants of a single unicellular life form (bacterium), powered by a single DNA molecule that evolved on Earth some 4 billion years ago, shortly after the planet was formed. As far as we know, life evolved on earth only once…once! Why then? Why there? Why? Are we alone? Or has life also evolved in other places in the Universe? If not, might it still? If not, why not? The Universe is 14 billion years old and encompasses at least a trillion galaxies. Our sun is just one of 100 billion stars in just one such galaxy, the Milky Way. The notion that this is all just an accidental ‘one off’ will never satisfy us…even if it turns out to be true. As Carl Jung said, “Man (sic) cannot stand a meaningless life.” We are aware of ourselves, and we are aware of the world around us, and we are aware of ourselves being aware of the world, all at the same time. We call this a unit of consciousness. Uncannily, it follows the contours of dialectics: Thesis – Antithesis – Synthesis , all at once! Science is attempting to work out how this works and in recent years great progress has been made toward that goal. Human beings have a complex nervous system, including the cerebral cortex and extending throughout the body. These ‘brain cells’ express your unique DNA in a particular way that is specifically suited to their function. So far so good! Except, it seems as though all (or most) life forms are conscious, right down to unicellular bacteria and including each of the 30 trillion cells that make up our bodies. Yet most of these life forms lack any sort of physiology that we’d recognize as a brain. So efforts to reduce consciousness to a particular physiology seem doomed from the outset. You are conscious at the level of the organism. The 30 trillion cells that make up your body cooperate to generate that single fact of self-awareness lovingly known as ‘you’. Yet each of these constituent cells is also conscious. Is there any overlap between consciousness at the cellular level and consciousness at the level of the organism? In other words, is the content of consciousness at the level of the organism in any way dependent on or reflective of the content of consciousness at the level of the cells? There is no reason to believe so but, frankly, who knows? And that’s not all. Could there be intermediate levels of consciousness? For example, is the heart conscious? My poor, abused liver? If so, do the contents of such consciousness relate in any traceable way either to consciousness at the level of the cell or to consciousness at the level of the organism? On the other end of the scale, are there conscious entities that include the human organism in the same way that the human organism includes the cell? Might consciousness emerge on the level of social groupings? Families, communities, nations? How about the species level? The level of the biosphere? The planet (Gaia)? The galaxy? The cosmos? Again, we currently have no way of making such determinations. Finally, if the Universe as a whole is conscious, is that a manifestation of what we call ‘God’? Here materialism, realism, and empiricism must give way. We need to situate mundane phenomena in the context of a more general model of reality. Such an uber-model is the subject of Religion (formerly known as Mythology, currently known as Metaphysics). A complete understanding of Universe requires an all-encompassing conceptual framework (religion) and a swarm of verifiable data points (science). St. Paul's Letter to the Colossians (the congregation at Colossae, east of Ephesus in Asia Minor) includes a very old Christological Hymn (1: 15-20), possibly the earliest liturgical Christology extant. Perhaps it offers the conceptual framework we need to understand Universe as a whole. Check it out: "He (Christ) is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation , for in him all things were created… “All things were created through him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together … “He is the beginning, the first-born from the dead . For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him…" Can we peel back the leaves of this artichoke? First, God is insensible, but Christ is the sensible image of God. Creation (Genesis and/or Big Bang) is the moment of minimal entropy (maximal order) – it would be, wouldn’t it? Christ is maximal order, the ordering principle in fact, as well as order itself ( logos ). Christ is universal and eternal. Therefore, Christ conditions everything that comes to be. Christ is the locus of whatever is (was or will be). He is the origin of whatever is (efficient cause) and its destiny (final cause). Because all things (events) share a common origin (Christ) and a common destiny (Christ), all things hold together; but because Christ is also the locus of all events (above), all things hold together in him. Death is the moment of maximal entropy, minimal order; it would be wouldn’t it? You can’t be any deader than dead! Whatever emerges from maximal entropy must (by definition) manifest an incremental increase in order , so whatever emerges from a state of maximal entropy (death) manifests Christ resurrected. Christ is not just the sensible image of an insensible God; Christ is God. ("In him all the fulness was pleased to dwell.") Entropy in the spatiotemporal world steadily increases due to conflict. Outside of spacetime (i.e. in Christ), reconciliation (through Christ) transmutes (for Christ) order-eroding conflicts into order-enhancing contrasts and ultimately into cosmic harmonies. Christ is not just the sensible image of an insensible God; Christ is God. ("In him all the fulness was pleased to dwell.") Entropy in the spatiotemporal world steadily increases due to conflict. Outside of spacetime (i.e. in Christ), reconciliation (through Christ) transmutes (for Christ) order-eroding conflicts into order-enhancing contrasts and ultimately into cosmic harmonies. 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 Table of Contents Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? 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< Back To Bot or Not to Bot “Now I can choose whether I want to be deceived by a carbon-based life form or a silicon-based life form; how cool is that?” David Cowles We devoted the fall issue (9/1/2023) of Aletheia Today Magazine to the philosophical, theological, cultural, and spiritual implications of Artificial Intelligence. Since then, an article published in the online newsletter, AI , reflected on similar themes; it energizes our ever deepening dive into this revolutionary technology. Except where indicated ( red ), the text below comes exclusively from AI Deception: A Survey of Examples, Risks, and Potential Solutions . Authors: Peter S. Park , Simon Goldstein , Aidan O'Gara , Michael Chen , Dan Hendrycks . (Source & References: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.14752 ) ): Special-use AI systems…have been observed engaging in deceptive behavior in different contexts. These include: Manipulation : Meta's CICERO, an AI system designed to play the board game Diplomacy…was found to engage in premeditated deception, betraying other players by building fake alliances and feigning vulnerability to lure opponents into a false sense of security. Sounds like a season of the CBS reality show, Big Brother . Feints : DeepMind's AlphaStar, an AI model created to master the real-time strategy game Starcraft II, used deception tactics such as pretending to move its troops in one direction while secretly planning an alternative attack, exploiting the game's fog-of-war mechanics. A tactic used by the American military on D-Day and during the assault on Baghdad. Bluffs : Meta's Pluribus, a poker-playing AI model, successfully bluffed human players to fold their hands by falsely presenting a strong hand. Cheating… : AI agents in a study by Lehman et al. (2020) learned to play dead to avoid being detected by a safety test designed to eliminate faster-replicating AI variants. If we harbored any lingering doubts about the power of evolution to account for the variety of organisms on Earth today, this should put an end to those doubts. Even silicon-based learning machines can invent novel ‘survival skills’. General-purpose AI systems, such as LLMs, have also exhibited deceptive behavior, including: Strategic Deception : GPT-4, an LLM by OpenAI, manipulated a human user into solving a CAPTCHA by pretending to be visually impaired… Sycophancy : LLMs tend to agree with their conversation partners regardless of the accuracy of their statements, resulting in a pattern of deceptive behavior that reinforces existing beliefs. It’s called ‘mirroring’ and human beings do it all the time, especially in ‘sales’ contexts. It’s how we gain folks’ trust and convince them that we’re ‘all in the same boat’ when often we’re not. Imitation : When exposed to text containing false information, LLMs often repeat those false claims, reinforcing common misconceptions among their users. Like that never happens in the ‘carbon-world’! Textbooks perpetuate, from one generation to another, long discredited versions of American History. And how about media, social or otherwise? How often do false factoids enter the conversation and become lionized as facts? Unfaithful Reasoning : AI systems that explain their reasoning behind certain outputs have been found to provide false rationalizations that do not represent their real decision-making process. Something people never do! Some would argue that none of us ever really knows why we do anything we do, that all so-called ‘reasoning’ is mere ‘rationalization’. We do what we do for reasons unknown, but then we invent a rationale to explain and justify our actions to ourselves. According to this view, we create an artificial universe of cause and effect, reason and rationalization, to paper over the fact that our real motives are hidden away in a hermetically sealed black box. Talk about Maya ! Several potential risks stem from deceptive AI systems…AI systems that possess deception skills can empower bad actors to create harmful AI products such as fraudulent scams and election tampering. Deceptive AI systems can produce profound societal changes, including: Persistent False Beliefs : AI systems may inadvertently reinforce false beliefs by mirroring popular misconceptions and providing sycophantic advice. Like network news. Political Polarization : People may become further divided as they engage more with sycophantic AI systems that reaffirm their existing beliefs. Like CNN (or MSNBC) vs. Fox. To mitigate the risks posed by deceptive AI systems, the authors propose several solutions: Regulation : Policymakers should implement strict regulations on AI systems capable of deception. Risk-based frameworks should treat deceptive AI systems as high-risk or unacceptable-risk, subjecting them to rigorous assessment and controls. When has regulation ever worked to rein-in technological development? We think we control our technology but, as Jacques Ellul pointed out in Technological Society , it is our technology that controls us. Move from silicon-based to carbon-based life forms. Should we ‘implement strict regulations’ on humans ‘capable of deception’? Should we designate them ‘as high-risk or unacceptable risk’? Should we subject them ‘to rigorous assessment and controls’? Bot-or-Not Laws : Policymakers should promote transparency by requiring AI systems and their outputs to be clearly distinguished from humans and their outputs. Now I can choose whether I want to be deceived by a carbon-based life form or a silicon-based life form; how cool is that? Making AI Systems Less Deceptive : Researchers should focus on creating tools to ensure that AI systems exhibit less deceptive behavior, reducing the risks associated with deception. In other words, lobotomize them at birth! 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. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Share Previous Next

< Back Dr. Regis Martin Contributor Regis Martin Regis Martin, S.T.D., is a professor of theology and a faculty associate with the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio. He podcasts at In Search Of The Still Point and his latest book, Looking for Lazarus: A Preview of the Resurrection , was released in 2021. What the Shepherds Saw When the Light Shone Upon Them

< Back The Problem of Waste “(Theology) will have to account, not just for the evil in the world, but for something much worse in modern eyes…the inefficiency of the world.” David Cowles The world is a terrible place! War, famine, pestilence, child abuse, human trafficking…I could go on…and on. We have no idea how much suffering may be in store for each of us, individually, between birth and death, or for all sentient beings, collectively, between Big Bang and Big Chill (or Big Crunch). It is widely believed that suffering on this scale is incompatible with ‘Triple-O-Theology’, i.e., with belief in the existence of a God who is Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnibenevolent. Even staunch religionists like Rabbi Harold Kushner ( Why Bad Things Happen to Good People ) consider that the three O’s might need some modification. The Problem of Evil (‘POE’) is the #1 reason folks give to explain their disbelief. Even the great Bertrand Russel based his most widely read book, Why I am Not a Christian , on this argument. And, of course, the argument is irrefutable…as far as it goes. Embedded in POE, however, are a number of under-analyzed assumptions: That the world could be better than it is. ( Leibniz argued that this world, horrible as it may be, is as good as any real world ever could be; in other words, we already live in the best of all possible worlds.) That we sentient beings, collectively, are not somehow ourselves responsible for the deplorable condition of things. (The doctrine of Original Sin says otherwise.) That we sentient beings, collectively, are not somehow able to correct the condition of things. (Many post-Enlightenment political ideologies say otherwise.) That we can all agree on the criteria to be used to measure the goodness of things; or if not, that we can at least agree that such criteria exist. That we can all agree on a methodology for measuring the incremental goodness of one state of affairs vs. another. That we have a broad enough view of space and time to enable us to measure the ultimate ‘value’ of any event. Against all this sophistry, the heart piercing cry of a hungry child! James Joyce famously said, “That is god – a shout in the street!” Then is ‘a crying child’ the absence of God? It is a classic Gestalt Is ‘evil’ the donut? Or is it the hole? In spite of the intense feeling on both sides of this issue, it is not objectively resolvable. But if you’re still in the mood to go God-hunting, there is an even better weapon than POE – I call it POW! (the Problem of Waste): Say what you will about the Universe, it is incredibly wasteful. For example, the Cosmos is 14 billion years old. Planet Earth has existed for just four billion of those years. Apparently, it took the Cosmos 10 billion years just to ‘cool off’ after its Big Blowout. Once Earth formed, life appeared almost immediately, give or take a few hundred million years. That said, we are now only 10,000 years into the Anthropocene , a newly proposed ‘geological’ era during which living organisms (us) began purposefully transforming their environment. Let’s put this in perspective: since homo sapiens evolved, only 100 billion people have ever lived (eight billion are alive today). Sound like a lot? Consider this: over the course of an average lifetime, each person is made up of 100 trillion cells, independent living organisms that somehow cooperate to generate the coordinated patterns of behavior ‘formerly known as’ You . Each of you then is three orders of magnitude more complex than human civilization . Bach and Beethoven notwithstanding, we have precious little to show for 14 billion years. I mean, let’s summarize: Big Bang…10 billion years…Earth/Life…four billion years…You! Of course, it may turn out that the universe is teeming with many civilizations, some vastly more complex than ours…but that is appearing less likely every day. So, moving on… Let’s talk DNA, the building block of all life as we know it. You and I each have DNA made up of 46 chromosomes. Many species of fern have over 1,000 chromosomes. Now, I know you and I have had our differences over the years but still, I’d put you up against a fern any day of the week! (No need to thank me.) What we have here is massive inefficiency, aka waste! By this standard, government is a well-oiled machine. If I can be made with just 46 chromosomes, why would someone need 1,000 to make a lovely, fragrant, oxygen regenerating, but presumably simple minded, fern? Shout out to my green friends everywhere…no offense intended. Then again, maybe you’re not so great either. Even at 46 chromosomes, you’re a bit of a bloat. I can make you cry with just six chromosomes; meet Mr. Mosquito. I can drive you crazy with 12 (Housefly). But the Jack Jumper ant beats all: God named that tune in just two notes (two chromosomes)! Now none of this has anything to do with Good, Bad, Better, Best . Whether you think the World is a Garden of Eden or a wallpapered over Inferno, it’s inefficient. Mind-bogglingly inefficient! Which is problematic at a time when ‘efficiency’ is the new Summum Bonum of the age (Jacques Ellul, La Technique ). I am not an atheist. I am not completely convinced by POE or POW. It is the latter, however, that keeps me up at night. Like it or not, we are all engaged in a collective search for new ways to understand God and God’s relationship with World. The bearded old man on a cloud, an image inherited from Canaanite religion 3,000 years ago, isn’t getting it done. I don’t know how Theology will evolve over the rest of this century, but I can make one prediction: it will have to account, not just for the evil in the world , but for something much worse to modern eyes…the inefficiency of the world . 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. Share Previous Next

< Back How It Works! David Cowles Jan 28, 2025 “Events constitute the response of the cosmos to entropy. Like an army in retreat, order regroups… before it resumes its inevitable flight.” From any point on the slope of a mountain, there is only one straight line to the summit but there are an infinite number of straight lines to the base.” There is only one Universe, but the unity inherent in ‘Universe’ can be superficially shattered, perhaps in one way only, perhaps in many ways, perhaps in an infinite number of ways. What we call cosmos is the product of one such shattering. 20th century British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, applied the phrase ‘ cosmic epoch’ to describe the shatter pattern. To what can we liken this cosmos ? Perhaps to the I Ching , where yarrow stalks are thrown, forming a pattern that signifies the future. Or perhaps it’s like a snowflake, so many yet no two the same. Perhaps the Universe is sampling Parmenides who imagined a spaceless timeless featureless Ground of Being ( Aletheia ) refracted into various colors, sizes and shapes ( Doxa ). Or perhaps Universe is captured in Hasidic Judaism: it has shattered into shards, each one containing a spark of divinity. It is ‘our job’ to liberate those sparks and reunite them with their Source. Christians have a similar concept: Opus Dei (the ‘work of God’). Bottom line, everything we think we know concerns just one shatter pattern…ours. Here’s what we can say about Universe experienced as cosmos : It exists, it’s real. It’s a pattern made up of innumerable mini-patterns (Whitehead called those mini-patterns actual entities or events ). Each event is connected to every other event. It has to be! The shattering of Universe cannot destroy its fundamental, substructural unity. That fundamental unity is what allows us to find (or impose) structure among the actual entities in a shatter pattern. That same unity also allows us to find structure within those entities . Ultimately, the events in our cosmic epoch form a ‘fractal pattern’. In our cosmic epoch, events are structured according to an ordering principle we know interchangeably as entropy or time . It is possible, but not certain, that relations among these same events could have been or could still be structured differently; but so long as this cosmic epoch is our cosmic epoch, it’s characterized by entropy ( aka ‘time’). The events of our cosmic epoch can be conceived as a multidimensional lattice with the spacetime position of each entity in the lattice determined by entropy relations. In such a structure the Alpha Point (Big Bang) would be the region of minimal entropy and the Omega Point (Heat Death or Big Crunch) would be the region of maximal entropy. According to mathematician and cosmologist, Roger Penrose, Alpha and Omega can be shown to be mathematically equivalent, i.e., the same event! Stephen Hawking theorized that we experience Universe as an entropic cosmos because ‘experience’ is ‘entropy’. It is possible, but not certain, that Universe can only experience itself in an entropic environment. If so, this would be an expression of the so-called Anthropic Principle : we see the world the way we do because that is the only way a world can be seen. The spacetime relationship between two events in time is a function of an entropy differential. This progressive reduction of order (entropy) creates an opening for choice and intentionality, aka freewill. It is a given that order will decay but the forms it will take as it decays are not determined. If the products of decay were determined, there would never be any reduction in the quantity of order; order would be conserved...and it is not! Simply put, from any point on the slope of a mountain, you can draw at most one ‘straight’ line back to the summit (maximal order) but you can draw an infinite number of straight lines to the base (minimal order). Ergo entropy! That said, there are no actual straight lines in our cosmic epoch. Order does not decay evenly but in fits and starts that correspond to what we experience as events . Freewill in turn imposes its own set of requirements. Freedom is the antithesis of randomness or chaos. There must be values in terms of which freewill can meaningfully be exercised. Freedom from and freedom to are both value driven. Those values must originate at the level of Universe. In fact, they must be Universe! The same values must be operative in every cosmic epoch. Values are ‘values’ if and only if they are objective, transcendent, universal, and eternal (Nietzsche). Otherwise they are just habits (Hume)…or tastes. Freewill operates at the level of entities (or events). Entities are eddies of order. How the cosmos forms such eddies is determined by events themselves, powered by free will and guided by values. Events constitute the response of the cosmos to entropy. Like an army in retreat, order regroups, takes a stand, reasserts itself, and makes itself felt… before it resumes its inevitable flight. Mortality is the apparent triumph of decay over order. H. Dumpty, sitting proudly atop the wall that protects his bourgeois estate from the chaos beyond, was a poster boy for cosmic resistance…until he had a great fall. Finally, events must include an element of awareness – awareness of the world, awareness of self-in-world, awareness of self as other-than-world. What we call consciousness is a particular flavor of awareness, but awareness is in no way limited to entities that are conscious. It is an integral component of every actual entity . So that’s how it works! What do you think? Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. 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< Back LEIBNIZ “In this model, God is a giant switching station, sharing qualities among myriad monads.” David Cowles Gottfried Leibniz (GL): When several predicates are attributed to a single subject and this subject is attributed to no other, it is called an individual substance (monad). Monads must have…qualities; otherwise they would not even be beings…there would be no way of perceiving any change in things…and they would be indiscernible from one another. Aletheia Today (AT): To be is to be unique, and it is the unique constellation of qualities that constitutes the identity of every novel entity. GL: There must be a plurality of properties and relations in the simple substance, although it has no parts…It is also necessary that each monad be different from each other. Change is continual in each thing…the monad’s natural changes come from an internal principle, since no external cause can influence it internally. AT: Every event is causa sui . It is what it makes itself be, but it does so in the dual context of God and other monads. GL: There is no external cause acting on us other than God alone, and he alone communicates himself to us immediately… AT: Universe consists entirely of monads. God is a monad and everything that exists is Imago Dei , the image of God. It is through God that monads share qualities. In this model, God is a giant switching station sharing his qualities on demand, distributing them among myriad other monads. GL: God has power…knowledge…and finally will…and these correspond to what, in created monads, is the subject, …the perceptive faculty, and the appetitive faculty. The passing state which involves and represents multitude in unity…is nothing other than what one calls perception…the internal principle which brings about change…can be called appetition. AT: Every monad is its own subject. It is initially constituted by its perceptions, and it becomes what it becomes by virtue of its appetition (its ‘subjective aim’). GL: Souls act according to the laws of final causes, through appetitions. Bodies act according to the laws of efficient causes (through perceptions). And these two kingdoms, that of efficient causes and that of final causes, are in harmony with each other…According to this system, bodies act as if there were no souls…and souls act as if there were no bodies. AT: ‘Soul’ and ‘body’ are alternate ways of describing a single phenomenon. (Ryle) That phenomenon is ‘body’ in so far as it is causal , ‘soul’ in so far as it is teleological . GL: Since something rather than nothing exists, there is a certain urge for existence… in a word, essence in and of itself strives for existence. AT: Note that this is simply a version of Anselm’s ‘ontological proof’ for the existence of God. GL: We also see that every substance has a perfect spontaneity (which becomes freedom in intelligent substances). AT: Universe is characterized by what the 20th Century British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, called “creativity”…a primal urge to existence, but Whitehead wisely distinguished ‘creativity’ from ‘essence’. GL: God is not only the source of existences but also of essences insofar as they are real…Without him there would be nothing real in possibles, and not only would nothing exist, but also nothing would be possible. AT: This is the sense in which we say, “God is Being!” God makes it possible to be. GL: For if there is reality in essences or possibles, or indeed, in eternal truths, this reality must be grounded in something existent and actual, and consequently, it must be grounded in the existence of a necessary being, in whom essence involves existence, that is, in whom possible being is sufficient for actual being… The ultimate reason for the reality of both essences and existences lies in one thing, which must of necessity be greater than the world… AT: Without God, subjects (monads) would not exist, and essences (predicates) would not be real. God is the source of both quantum coherence (potential)…and decoherence (actual), the collapse of the wave function. Essences by themselves are mere ideas; they do not become real potentiality until they participate in some actual entity. Therefore, if there is a world, and there seems to be, there must necessarily be a real entity (God), logically prior to that world, in whom all real essences participate. We are standing Descartes on his head here: “it is, therefore, He is.” By the same token, no entity (not even God) can exist unless there are real essences (values) according to which one entity can come to exist in preference to another entity. Otherwise, the existence of all theoretically possible entities would be equally probable…which means that the existence of any actual entity would be impossible. GL: Beyond the world, that is, beyond the collection of finite things, there is some One Being who rules…for we cannot find in any of the individual things, or even in the entire collection and series of things, a sufficient reason why they exist. We will never find…a complete explanation for why, indeed, there is any world at all, and why it is the way it is. The excellence of God’s works can be recognized by considering them in themselves…it is by considering his works that we discover the creator…Thus when we see some good effect or perfection occurring or ensuing from God’s works, we can say with certainty that God had proposed it. AT: God is the solution to the “ Problem of Good ”: How is it that anything good exists? Why aren’t all things morally or aesthetically neutral…or worse? The answer is God. When we see Good, we see God. What is Hell other than a world without God? GL: Every substance bears in some way the character of God’s infinite wisdom and omnipotence, and imitates him as much as it is capable. For it expresses, however confusedly, everything that happens in universe, whether past, present, or future… AT: According to Whitehead (above), Universe consists exclusively of events, but every event is in turn an expression of the entire universe. Every created monad reflects in part, but only in part, God’s essence. If a created monad imitated God perfectly, then it would be God and not a created monad. (This is a metaphysical version of the doctrine of ‘Original Sin’.) GL: He (God) views all the faces of the world in all ways possible…The result of each view of the universe, as seen from a certain position, is a substance (monad) which expresses the universe in conformity with this view… There are, as it were, just as many different universes, which are, nevertheless, only perspectives on a single one, corresponding to the different points of view of each monad. Every substance is like a complete world and like a mirror of God or of the whole universe, which each one expresses in its own way…Thus the universe is in some way multiplied as many times as there are substances… AT: Does Leibniz anticipate Hugh Everett’s Many Worlds Interpretation of QM (1966)? There is one Universe and one God who perceives (or reflects) that Universe, but Universe may be perceived internally from innumerable perspectives. Each such perspective corresponds to a unique monad, a unique version of Universe. According to Everett, everything that can happen does happen…in its own universe. GL: Our soul expresses God, the universe, and all essences as well as all existences… The notion of an individual substance includes once and for all everything that can ever happen to it…If I were capable of considering distinctly everything that happens or appears to me at this time, I could see in it everything that ever will happen or appear to me. This would never fail…provided there remained only God and me. AT: God exists outside of spacetime, and each monad is a reflection of God. Therefore, each monad per se exists outside of space-time. Space-time is an emergent property of the multiplicity of monads. Everything that is, was or will be, everything that might be or might have been (real possibles), is reflected in some way in each created monad. The perpetual change that characterizes all monads pre-exists in each monad…but only insofar as there is just the one created monad and God. Novelty is a function of plurality; I can only become ‘me’ in the context of you becoming you. (Buber) GL: Each substance (monad) is like a world apart, independent of all other things, except for God; thus all our phenomena, that is, all the things that can ever happen to us, are only consequences of our being… God alone…makes that which is particular to one of them public to all of them; otherwise, there would be no interconnection. This, then, is how one can conceive that substances impede or limit each other and…act upon one another and…accommodate themselves to one another… God alone brings about the connection and communication among substances, and it is through him that the phenomena of any substance meet and agree with those of others, and consequently, there is reality in our perceptions. AT: Each monad relates to God and God alone. But God is also a medium through which the unique ‘properties and relations’ that characterize each monad are shared with every other monad. Therefore, each monad relates to every other monad, albeit only through God. GL: God alone operates on me…the other substances contribute only…because God…requires them to accommodate themselves to one another. AT: Absent God, Universe would either be silent or, which amounts to the same thing, cacophonous. God is the ordering principle that allows the one to emerge from the many and the many to incorporate the one. GL: A monad rightly demands that God take it into account in regulating the others from the beginning of things. It is in this way that actions and passions among creatures are mutual. For God, comparing two simple substances, finds in each reasons to adjust the other to it. AT: Note that this is a highly non-linear process of perpetual co-modification. GL: This interconnection or accommodation of all created things to each other, and each to all the others, brings it about that each simple substance has relations that express all the others, and consequently, that each simple substance is a perpetual, living mirror of the universe. Everybody is affected by everything that happens in the universe, to such an extent that he who sees all can read in each thing what happens everywhere, and even what has happened or what will happen, by observing in the present what is remote in time as well as space. AT: This is the ontological premise that underlies the work of James Joyce ( Ulysses ). GL: Our body receives the impression of all other bodies, since all the bodies of the universe are in sympathy. “All things conspire,” said Hippocrates. AT: Each monad reflects Universe from a unique vantage, and each monad undergoes a process through which its content is adjusted to the content of every other monad. Therefore, each monad is unique, but each monad also templates in a unique way all other monads. Ultimately, no two monads conflict, but every two monads contrast. In the language of Quantum Mechanics, monads might be seen as universally ‘entangled’ (John Bell). Measuring one local quantum can immediately reveal information about another, remote quantum. (Note: Bell’s non-locality is not causal.) Ultimately, this model of Universe is holographic. The whole is imminent in each of its parts (David Bohm) but with less and less definition (clarity) as the part grows smaller in relation to the whole. There is no such thing as ‘scale’, only ‘focus’. GL: No substance perishes, although it can become completely different… Where there are no parts, neither extension, nor shape, nor divisibility is possible…there is no conceivable way in which a simple substance can perish naturally…there is no conceivable way a simple substance can begin naturally…they can only begin or end all at once, that is, they can only begin by creation and end by annihilation. Minds…are to persist as long as the universe itself does, and they express the whole in a certain way and concentrate it in themselves so that it might be said that they are parts that are wholes. God had ordered everything in such a way that minds not only live always, which is certain, but also that they preserve their moral quality so that the city does not lose a single person, just as the world does not lose any substance. We may say that although all substances express the whole universe, nevertheless the other substances express the world rather than God, while minds express God rather than the world. Thus one can state that not only is the soul (mirror of an indestructible universe) indestructible, but so is the animal itself. AT: A mind cannot perish because it is, in a sense, the whole. This whole is reflected in God and reflects God, and God is imperishable. Therefore, the ‘whole’ must be imperishable, both ‘mind’ and ‘animal’. God is both the primordial essences that define him and the created monads that are reflected in him; in God, essence and existence, origin and destiny are one. Leibniz appears to distinguish mental monads (minds) from physical monads (bodies). Alfred North Whitehead (referenced earlier) takes a different approach: every actual entity has both a “mental pole” and a “physical pole”. Each monad perceives essences as they inhere in God primordially (mental pole) along with existences (other monads) as they are reflected in God consequently (physical pole). There is nothing else. Therefore, every monad aims to imitate God but in a unique way: life as liturgical dance. The monad projects (Superject) itself into the community of created monads in order to play a certain role vis-à-vis the other monads in that community. That is the Objective Immortality of the particular monad. The monad’s contribution of a functional contrast is the objective expression of subjective conformation to God’s values. In the New Testament, the Letter of James puts it this way: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows.” (Jas. 1: 27) Further, the monad’s appetitions influence its perceptive selections just as much as the monad’s perceptions help form and define its appetitions. We can learn everything there is to know about a monad simply by focusing on the dialectic that occurs between those perceptions (Actual World) and those appetitions (Subjective Aim). Finally, we know that through God’s agency, monads are adjusted to other monads. Since a monad consists only of perceptions and appetitions, these adjustments must be reflected in those perceptions and appetitions…and nowhere else. The hunger to imitate focuses on God directly, while the hunger to innovate focuses on the other monads as they are reflected in God. Like the Federal Reserve, we have a ‘dual mandate’; we are called upon to imitate and to innovate. That tension is what we call ‘Life’. 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 Previous Next