Consequences of the Lament

In response to Reflections on Free Will, by Daniel C. Danett, Sam Haris wrote The Marionette's Lament. In this Sam refutes with the criticism of Daniel about his book Free Will. In the beginning Sam is quite vociferously reactive of the style and tone of Daniel's criticism. In particular Sam finds the reflections of Daniel quite sneering. This may not have been the case with an ordinary reader whose native language is specially not English. In reality, an ordinary reader may have been unglued by a lot of intricacies of the subject as soon as he/she may have started reading the reflections. For instance, on one occasion Daniel describes the reflections as a museum of mistakes. An ordinary reader may not have noticed it as sarcasm or ridicule. Sam did! And responded quite vociferously to it. The fact is that a reader whose native language is not English might have found it quite difficult to appreciate this and other such comments specially because of lack of familiarity with the sense of sarcasm used in the English language or English cultures. A museum is just a museum at the end of the day. And there are so many museums around the world. So why make so much of a big deal about a museum of mistakes, which is just another museum. Isn't it? Oops! I have started to sound like Al-Capone!

After addressing Daniels reflections Sam goes on to explain his own conception of free will. This is done specially nicely when he tries to change the topic in his section "changing the topic". Otherwise, at least I would still have been baffled about the notion of free will he is trying to project. Free will is free will at the end of the day and we all have it. Some of us use our free will in one way or the other depending on how we wish to choose. (More Al-Capone!)

Sam's vantage point becomes specially clear when he distinguishes between first person and third person experiences or influences that shape the personality of a person. For instance, according to what a common person may understand about his notion of free will can be explained with the help of the following example. 

Consider a person who has chosen to become a cobbler. He chooses to become a cobbler because he thinks that it is a benign man's profession. A man can mend shoes and also be safe from many a distractions and dangers in his daily life. All he needs to do is to learn to sew and stitch the shoes well. He hones his motor skills to suit for speedy stitching. This way he gets better and better at making/mending shoes and becomes better and wealthier day by day. Doing so he also evades many chances of getting involved in unnecessary conflicts he would have been involved in otherwise. Had he been a truck driver, he might have been dead already in a road accident. Had he chosen a more sociable profession, such as that of a car mechanic, for instance, he may already have been badly injured due to a dispute with a client or burnt due to exposure to radiator overheating. As a cobbler all he needs to do is to find a solitary corner, sit there and hone his skill to stitch shoes and not his own hands. Pretty safe!

Common man, or folk, would obviously think that the cobbler made some really nice decisions in his life and became what he became, a successful cobbler. Does not the cobbler then have free will? To the common man, he really has that. He thought about a career choice at some stage of his life. Then he took a step to starting working on that. And as he started working he also learnt to have better self control and added to that, better motor skills due to which he can stitch more shoes in a given span of time that he would not have done otherwise.

Sam argues that this is really the illusion of free will the common man, or folk, suffer from. Daniel comes along to agree with the folk for their respite. According to Sam's framework of free will, however, the cobbler exactly does not have that freedom. Sam would argue that the circumstances, that shaped the cobbler to become a cobbler, have/had been governing his decisions throughout. The external environmental threats and influences forced him to become a cobbler. For instance, the cobbler may have feared at some stage of his life that taking up a more sociable profession was hazardous for him in some sense. His yearning for personal security urged him to take a professional choice he would not have taken otherwise. What if the cobbler had wanted to become a news editor instead but was too shy to have become that.

Sam would also argue that the cobbler's yearning for becoming something other (a mechanic, a driver, or a news editor) than what he actually became (a cobbler) also does not show in any way that the person had any free will. All his desires emerged from circumstances and influences that were out of his control. To this end, Sam indeed does have a point and he also takes us out of the misery of endlessly wondering about the real point of his argument.

How does then Sam's theory of free will cope up with the cobbler's acquiring better motor skills. His decision to learn to become a better stitcher can be ruled out using the same reasoning as above to show that free will is an illusion. The fact that he somehow acquired motor skills can also be ruled out same way. It is just a part of his decision to learn better shoe stitching and since he made that decision under the influence of external factors (factors emerging from events happening in systems other than his self), he simply does not have free will. However, how about his experience of dextrous stitching. The experience one can observe fast, near perfect mechanism of stitching shoes, with almost no flaws. How does one account for this fast stitching process as one observes it as what Sam calls a moment by moment experience of life? Sam would argue that this also suggests that the cobbler does not have free will. 

The robot-like skills that the cobbler has acquired through years of hard work and practice also suffers from third person influences. Actually, as any experience does, it may as well suffer from bunch of external influences. 

Grave Consequences: By suggesting that people do not have free will what Sam intend's to show is that people cannot be held responsible for their actions. Here, Sam's intention can sound both innocent and astute at the same time. Does not it make sense to say that since people are not the ultimate designers of their decisions and actions, it is irrelevant to hold them responsible for what they do.

Actually Sam has a deeper point when he suggests this. In a meaningful sense, he wants to liberate people from many things, such as a sense of guilt and sin and to free them out of prisons when they have been considered wrong and morally defunct by the society and the judiciary. This is done by saying that since people do not be held responsible for their actions it is absolutely irrelevant to hold them responsible for what they have done. In some sense this is what it means.

It is, however, not understandable at this point that how Sam actually thinks or would propose a newer judicial system to look like. A person who has murdered now is considered a murdered presently and accordingly he is sent to jail. If Sam's framework became applicable at some stage, how would that take into account this aspect and the associated repercussions at some latter stage.

A Deeper Point: I thought about Sam's work for quite a while. I have been reading him for quite a few years now and I know that he is an atheist. Indeed, as it appears from his writings, it is one of the life goals of Sam Harris to systematically argue against religion and hence existence of God. I seriously hope and pray that that would change at some stage of his life. But this is not the point I am trying to make, it is just a comment. So, as Sam is an atheist, one can wonder that how would Sam argue about an act of, let us say, terrorism (a bombing or whatever, we know of many such things) committed by someone. In particular how would Sam argue about the action of the person in light of his framework of free will? This is a very cogent question indeed. If a person does not have free will and he has committed a heinous crime such as creating a huge bombing event, how would Sam propose a justification of that or of his conception of free will. I propose, that Sam would propose, that that person, like all the other people, also did not have any free will. The person did that under the influence of things that have influenced him over his lifetime. More explicitly Sam would argue that it is not the person who should be held responsible for his action. Instead, it is the religious teachings he had had during his lifetime that should be attributed responsibility to. In short, Sam would argue against the religion instead of the person. This point would have far reaching consequences specially if his theory of free will is to be taken seriously. Allah Karim!

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  by  BrynJ 

A Reflection on Reflections

I managed to read the "Reflections on Free Will" by Daniel C. Dannett twice. This is a review of the book of Sam Harris named Free Will. I read the book twice due to the concern that I may have missed the point. Keeping in mind to not to miss the point is very essential in my point of view specially concerning this type of philosophical work. There are at least three cogent reasons for keeping in mind that the point not be missed. 1) This is a very delicate topic. On a superficial level it may sound artistic and, thus, easy to comprehend, but in reality it demands a lot of attention. 2) Sam Harris is a very elegant writer. There is no doubt about that. In as much as there might be a lot of his critics, I am sured he is admired by many due to his way of writing and the way he translates his thought process on paper (or a computer based book or blog for that matter). I also admire his writing its style and content. He poses very cogent questions at times. But there is one thing about Sam Harris's writing style that at times it appears that he swings his whole argument. He moves his discourse in a sort of a spiral and comes back to square one. One may really wonder at that instant on as to what is his point. That is why I believe that it is very important to re-read and to try to fully understand what he has really written and implied. Pun not intended! 3) Sometimes we can be shallow readers. Our not too good reading comprehensions, short attention spans, lack of focus, time varying interest, and dwindling energy can actually play a role in us missing the whole point altogether in an otherwise such an engaging and lengthy discourse. 

However, reflections has been written by Daniel C. Dennett and not by Sam Harris. And this one is actually not very confusing. In reality it really demystifies many of the conceptual caveats one may have about the subject of Free Will (while possibly creating others in the form of various esoteric thought experiments or whatever). So the point number 2 (among the 3) listed in the above paragraph might not really hold true in this case. However, since reflections on free will is actually a reflection of the work of Sam Harris, point 2 might begin to hold true to some extent for this book as well.

So what is reflections really all about. Reflections refutes the argument of Sam Harris that free will is an illusion. What Daniel argues about is that we human beings really have free will. This is the whole idea of this book. However, I was interested in understanding the subject in a bit more detail and on a deeper level. I was interested in understanding if there is something really deep about the subject of free will. And indeed there are a few really deep things about the subject of free will. I shall point out three things here that I came across in the book for the purpose of brevity. The real purpose in writing this (sort of a) summary is to create a stub about the subject so that I can revisit it latter at some stage for my own perusal, at least. In what follows, I am trying to write my concerns from memory. The reason for this is that I am already trying trying to struggle with other distractions as I am writing this.

The first thing I have noticed and I find worth commenting and contemplating about has something to do with the mention of immaterial souls. In the start of reflections, Daniel tries to defend the position of Sam Harris by somewhat suggesting that when he asserts that human do not have free will, his theory applies to our immaterial souls. And since we do not have immaterial souls (and since we are just lumps of biochemicals), the theory does not apply to us. This is what I have inferred at least. I admit that I could be wrong. My understanding could be flawed. Specially since I am writing this from memory and I do not have the draft of reflections opened in front of me. My concern is that irrespective of the fact that we have immaterial souls or not, what would be the repercussions of applying a similar scrutiny that whether we have free will or not if we actually had immaterial souls.

The second aspect about the book is the spectrum of various positions we can assume between free will and determinism. I have still not really understood the deep meanings of various positions such as combatilism, incombatilism etc. I do understand that combatilism implies that determinism and free will are compatible; both of them can exist (I wonder if exist is the right word) at the same time. Incombatilism is the converse. It means if free will can happen, determinism is false and vice versa. The problem is that it is really important to deeply understand these notions.

The third is the understanding of free will. The position Sam assumes is that free will is an illusion. That I have decided to read about free will. That I may have wondered at some stage on as to what it really means to have free will. That I eventually managed to find some thinkable reading material on it. Eventually I am writing about free will now. According to Sam's framework, I was not really free in choosing to come up to this point. According to Sam, there must have happened events in my life that were beyond my control that may have urged, motivated or influenced me to do all of this. For instance, I may have been impressed by philosophy at some stage. And at some stage prior to that I may have been told that philosophy was an enterprise worth getting impressed about. Daniel has argued that this does not imply that we do not have free will.

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  by  Tomas Sobek 

Clash of Civilizations

Clash of civilizations has been on my reading list for a very long time. Fortunately, I managed to find a copy of its Urdu translation in my own house. Ideally I would have loved to read the English version. However, as soon as I found the book (in Urdu) I found it so much enticing that I did not really care whether it was in English or whatever. I hope that the translation does not violate any copyright laws. Otherwise it could give rise to a new dimension to this "clash of civilizations". The translation of the book has been published by a gazetted publisher, namely, Nigaarshaat Publishers, Lahore. It is written on the relevant page that the publisher owns the copyrights of the book. The author of the book is Samuel P. Huntington. The name of the Urdu translator is Abdul-Majeed Tahir.

So what is clash of civilizations really all about? Clash of civilizations is a theory about international conflict that is supposed to shape the political and social dynamics of the post cold war world. To this end, in as much as the book must have been a geopolitical prophecy at the time of its writing, it possibly represents the era we are living in right now. Or it might be alright to say that either we are living in the post- clash of civilizations era or that we are briskly headed to it. 

So what is the theory of clash of civilizations all about? The theory of clash of civilizations colors and classifies the human world according to cultural and civilizational distances. It looks at and further draws boundaries between groups of people through various vantage points. However the main markers or factors that are used to bind a group of people together and to draw boundaries between other groups are social in nature.

The author goes in great details in describing the nature of Western civilization. West, according to the author, is composed of Europe, North America and Latin America. Whatever is left is termed as the rest according to the author. The author further proposes that the clas of civilizations can also be supposed to be a clash between the West and the rest. 

The other major civilizations that are figured out by the author are the Muslim, eastern Asian and Subcontinental Indian civilizations. Eastern civilization according to him is led by China, under the influence of Confucianism and also contains other cultures such as Japanese and Taiwanese. The author also talks about Russian as an actor playing under the influence of Orthodox Christianity.

The author also talks about the tilt in balance of power between various civilizations. According to the author it appears that the West is loosing, or would loose, the power and superiority of its civilizational doctrine rapidly. This shift of balance appears to be more favorable particularly for China.

In terms of conflicts it is predicted that on a macro level the conflicts would be between the West and the Rest. Whereas on a micro level conflicts would happen between Islam and the rest. The author also talks about other factors related to inter-civilizational conflicts such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation and arms race. The author also suggests remedies and precautions that could sway, abate or dissuade the risks of conflicts. 

Obviously the book is more detailed than this small summary. It is indeed worth reading the book. It is particularly quite appropriate for the times we live in. 

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  by  T-Hino 

A Hospitable Hospital

Last year I was in Copenhagen. On one odd Sunday I had an unprecedented attack of asthma. I left my apartment early in the morning and went out looking for a hospital. Eventually I ended up in Ritz hospital while the asthma was on. I was sent off to the intensive care unit where a nurse immediately applied all the paraphernalia on me that was required to abate the intensity of the attack.  For instance, the nurse fixed an oxygen mask on my mouth and checked other things such as the blood pressure, and so on.

After that I was moved to Hvidovre hospital in an ambulance. This hospital is also located in Copenhagen. There I was given a room and a bed to sleep in. Adequate care was also taken about my illness. I lived there for around a couple of days (or nights). The doctors gave me appropriate inhalers and noted down my medical history properly. I was also given nice food. As a matter of fact, I remember, that on one occasion when a food menu was given to me, I inquired whether the meat was halal or not. I was assured that all the meet that was cooked in the hospital was halal keeping in view that the hospital was frequented by Muslims. I found it quite impressive.

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I stayed there for a couple of days and that time was quite relaxing. Similarly, a few months prior to that I also had a chance to spend a couple of nights in the same hospital (i.e. Hvidovre hospital). The reason was that a friend of mine was sick. He also had asthma. We went to the RedCross first. They have an office close the HovedBaneGarden (the central railway station of Copenhagen). The personnel at RedCross are also very friendly and extremely vigilant about the random patients that come to them. They sent us off to Hvidovre Hospital seeing the emergency of the poor plight of my friend. 

My friend was admitted immediately in the hospital. I remember that a funny doctor came in to see him. He had a complete look at his condition. He then weaved his hands in the air and told him, "I will not let you die tonight." To sum it up, he was also taken care of very well. I also stayed in the hospital with my friend. It is also worth mentioning that all of this nice treatment was given both of the times free of charge. This is to say that we were not charged any penny. And I believe that this is important to acknowledge.

Other people in the hospital were also very nice and humane. I am particularly very impressed by the egalitarianism of Europe in general. This was exhibited to a great extent by the staff of Hvidovre hospital and the RedCross. I hope that the vast majority of our country would also adopt this kind of service oriented attitude. I deferred writing about this for a long time. However, I believe that this is quite important to acknowledge such events and gestures in a reasonable manner.

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  by  t_scholz 

Does Willpower Exist

Almost for the past one month I have been thinking about writing about willpower. The idea may sound trivial to the casual reader. However, it is interestingly not so. Why am I interesting in writing about this curiously has a very cogent reason. That is that while we are not so sure about whether we possess free will or not, how can we assume that possess willpower.

Quite interestingly my curiosity has coincided with the recent publication of Daniel C. Dennetts Reflections on Free Will. Sam Harris recently wrote a book titled Free Will. In response to that Daniel wrote a possible rebuttal to that. I have not been able to read Free Will possibly due to shortage of time and lack of access to a decent library that would host such books. I am sure it must be a very interesting book. On the other hand Daniel's rebuttal also sounds promising. In Sam's own words the rebuttal itself is as long as the book. 

Luckily I have been able to give it an initial eye-ball, something that I could possibly only do given my tough routine over the past few weeks. Daniel has some very interesting reflections on Sam's notions of free will. I could not comprehend everything, but one definitely gets a good deal of an idea even through casual reading. It is interesting to note that both Sam and Daniel hold interestingly opposing positions on existence of free will. While Sam argues that we as humans do not have free will, Daniel proposes the converse. However, the argument is not that simple. It becomes quite obfuscated specially when we involve compatiblist and incompatiblist theories into account. It is true about me at least that I find a lot of things difficult to comprehend. It might not be true for many other readers (or students). However, I presume that a more focused reading may help in alleviating my problem of understanding the whole gamut of "free-will" "no-free-will" theories. 

Assuming this knowledge of free will as a basis one may pose another interesting question: Does willpower exist? Often we hear success stories about ordinary people who dealt with extra-ordinary situations and came out as victorious. We tend to say that so and so person has tremendous willpower simply because he/she struggled very hard against so many unprecedented and unfavorable circumstances and eventually came out as victorious.

Mountaineers climb high mountains. In the due course they fall off high and rocky cliffs. They get emotionally shattered and physically crippled. However, they do not give up on their ambition to climb. Is this determination and audacity an exhibition of willpower?

I stopped blogging almost a month ago due to other important chores that I was supposed to undertake. As I stopped blogging I made a vow to myself that I would think about a few ideas about writing and come back and write with more zeal and passion as soon as I got a new idea. The very fact that I have somehow managed to come back and written off this article, is this suggestive that I possess some level of willpower in some  meaningful sense? 

In order to understand this we would initially have to understand what willpower simply means. In its simplest interpretation willpower can mean the ability to execute one's will. To this end, one should have the ability to have will or to will, irrespective of how a philosopher may believe that it is suitable for us to have it or not. Anyhow, if we agree with Sam Harris that we do not have free will at all, how can we have willpower? 

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  by  joiseyshowaa 

Effective Rules For An Excellent Life

Effective rules for an excellent life is a very elegant book written by Hakeem Tariq Mehmood Ubqari Majzoobi Chughtai. Hakeem Tariq is the founder of Ubqari Trust. The book is about personal development and self help. It is a very nice resource for anyone who is looking for emotional well being and valuable tips for improving various spheres of life. It is quite worthwhile to present a short summary of the book.

The first thing is that this book is written from an increasingly Islamic point of view. It mentioned quite frequently that it is important for any human being to have firm faith in the existence of God and to submit to His divine will. Various examples are given from the life of Prophet Muhammad (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him). People are generally advised top live their lives according to the tenets of Islam and by following the example of Prophet Muhammad (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him). 

However, the author does not shy away from quoting events from the lives of other noteworthy and influential people. These include Buddha, Saint Paul and the work of Dale Carnegie, to name but a few. The book has a huge set of sections and chapters.

One of the first sections of the book discusses the power of the human mind. Various aspects of our conscious minds and sub-conscious minds are discussed. The author then goes on to suggest ways to develop a magnetic personality. Emphasis is paid on time management and energy saving.

One of the sections is dedicated to analyzing the consequences of bad habits in the light of teachings of Islam and modern science. The author then goes on to advocate that human beings should strive to develop piety and sobriety in their personalities. The author also discusses various familial customs in the light of Islam. The benefits of positive thinking are discussed. It is advised to develop a habit of positive thinking and enjoying life. Mental health and depression are also discussed in a great detail.

The author then moves on to work related aspects of life. it is advised to fully absorb in one's work and change working style if necessary. It is advised to adopt healthy and interesting hobbies. The author also emphases quite a lot on health and to develop a positive attitude towards life. Aspects such as analytic skills, risk taking tendencies, dedication and aims are discussed and valuable advice is given on as to how to adjust and channelize them in the right direction. The author also discusses about the importance of family planning in life.

The author also discusses issues such as inferiority complex and lack of self confidence and advises cures for them. The authors suggests ways to deal with stress and to adjust one's cor beliefs and ideologies. One of the great things the author suggests is that a person should stop doing a postmortem of the past in order to get rid of it. Just move on, is the advice!

The author also suggests a scheme for performing self hypnosis. Schemes for self analysis are also discussed. The author also suggests ways for adapting better colloquial skills. To this end, the examples of Hazrat Muhammad (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him). The author also discusses psychological effects of lying. Rights of the humanity towards a human being are also discussed.

This is a remarkable book. Anyone who would read it would not regret the investment. It is specially suitable for the curious mind.

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  by  mikebaird 

Texsana Rens Og Vask

A close friend of mine, Muhammad Naveed Aslam, has a laundry in Denmark. A few months ago I told him about my rather new interest in writing and Internet marketing. I also told him that I wanted to create a website for him. I was particularly fond of writing good content for his website.  After some effort I created a website for his laundry in WordPress. The laundry is called Texsana Rens og Vask. It is located in Taastrup, Denmark. Actually it is just opposite the Taastrup S-tog station. It has a beautiful location and is very nice indeed. We also created a facebook fan page for the laundry as well. 

My friend offers a number of services at his laundry that are related to cleaning of clothes. He is also planning on creating a section on Genbrug where he would buy and sell used clothes. That would be really nice indeed.

The really good thing about my friend is that he is extremely generous. The other day an old nice Danish lady came to the laundry. She had to take her clothes. Somehow she did not have enough money with her to pay the dues. She complained that she could not pay since she was on a pension. Naveed gave her a huge concession seeing her condition. She was quite impressed and happy. It was quite nice to see her leaving happily.

Anyhow, it was fun to create and write content for his website. If you like the website, its outlook, its content and also its facebook fan page, please do not forget to click on the like button.

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  by  frankdouwes 

Right to Die

I just came across a news story that has got something to do with terminally ill peoples' right to die possibly with the aid of a doctor. I have not read the complete story. However, I understand the crux as it is a familiar one. 

This is a familiar story because a few months ago I read a similar story concerning an Irish ex-lecturer named Marie Fleming. I hope she is alive and gets better soon. At the time of reading she was suffering from multiple sclerosis. As much as I have an idea about this disease is that it renders the person totally dysfunctional and ambulatory. The whole story was sad as the whole family had appealed to the Irish supreme court for her to be given the right to die with assistance. This is indeed ironic specially concerning that the most instinctive of the human desires is to actually live and not to die. However, I presume that when pain overrides pleasure, people's desires shift.

At the time when I read the story I tried to find her contact details through the Internet. I was not fortunate enough to have found something valuable to that end. Finally I did manage to find the contact details of a few important personnel belonging to some Irish society of multiple sclerosis. I mailed a lot of them. I even called a couple of them on phone. The response I got from them was, however, not at all prompt or encouraging. 

In the process of finding those details I also came across a facebook page for a Canadian organization called Dying With Dignity. They help people in dying with some assistance. It is assisted suicide of some sort.

The reason I called them was that at the time when I came across the news, I was also listening to a lecture by Ubqari Institute. In the lecture, Allama Hakeem Tariq Mehmood Chughtai told the listeners that if a person having any sort of neurological illness listened to surahs (chapters) At-Taghaaban and Ar-Rehman (the Beneficent) of the Holy Quran, he/she would heal. I do not remember now that for how long these should be listened to. I think it was recommended to listen for 41 days regularly and possibly 41 times daily. I am posting links to these surahs below. You can also download an audio file containing both of these surahs from the website of Ubqari. The audio file is designed to play one surah in one ear and the other in the other. Click here to download. Please appreciate the fact that recitation of the Holy Quran is in itself quite euphonic. Also try to read the translations. They are also nice.

So this was the reason I was trying to call them. Another thing I wanted to share was about death itself. One of the surahs of Quran is called Yasin. One of the functions of this surah is that if this recited close to a dying man, the process of death becomes easy. The dying person dies a peaceful death. A link to surah Yasin is also below.

If you or someone you know are suffering very badly then spiritual shower is for you. It is really good for instantaneously feeling good. Again you can read the pages of Ubqari magazine for many prescriptions for treating incurable diseases. There are many herbal as well as spiritual philters and prescriptions etc. that are really nice. 

Check this out on Chirbit

The reason I refrained so much from posting this information here is that at the end of the day I do not feel like posting so much stuff pertaining to religion here. I felt that I should write about something else. However, I hope that this message would be sent across to the ears of Marie Fleming and the likes. May Allah forgive us all for our sins and remove hardships from us through his endless blessings.

On a separate note, there is no harm in listening to these videos specially if you are so much willing to die. Why not do something like listening to the Holy Quran before taking the last breath. What is the harm after all. May you live long though. And if you know Marie Fleming or anyone in her family in any way, please convey this message to her.

Death is inevitable. This is how a really sad letter titled approaching death by a late Toronto based lawyer, Edward Hung, begins. It is very sad indeed to read how he died and that he had to travel all the way to many places around the world to get himself cured as well as to arrange for someone to take his life. It is a pity that he had to die such a tragic death. So if death is so much inevitable and there is a person out there who is so eager to die, then why not try something different even if it is only for a while. Moreover, it is absolutely free.

 

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  by  andrewosterberg 

Mind Wandering

Consider that you are sitting in a large room around a dining table. In the room there are a handful of happy people. There are also a few familiar faces that you have not seen in a while. They are possibly your friends and relatives. The room is ornate with candles and balloons and the table is adorned with gifts, refreshments and a nice birthday cake. Everyone is happily clapping and singing birthday carols. You are their center of attention. But there is something wrong about the whole event. That is that you are not quite there. 

Numerous situations like this can be recollected. In an important meeting when you are supposed to pay attention to the minutes, you are mentally in your office. While you are bathing in the washroom, you are thinking about the badminton court. And while driving your car, you are cribbing in your mind about that comment your boss punningly made at your attire last week.

If you are suffering from a problem like this that wherever you are present physically, your mind has flown away to somewhere else, then you are suffering from mind wandering. Mind wandering can be a desirable quality on one hand and it can be quite dangerous behavior on the other.

Of course if you can naturally stretch your imagination about matters meriting some significance in times when you had otherwise been sitting idle, you can possibly use those moments to solve some important problems. Consider about the ample time you may have while you are traveling in a bus to get to work. If your mind wanders during the journey to the technical caveats of your work, you may as well find a solution to your professional issues. 

However, mind wandering can cost you a substantial price too. For instance, think about those cribbing thoughts you may have had about the sarcasm of your boss at your dress. Had you extended that thought train a little bit further and developed an argument, it may not only have become a cause for loosing your job, it could have been life threatening too if you had lurched your car on the road as a result of that mental aggression.

Research suggests that the posterior cingulate cortex of our brains is responsible for this type of behavior. Research also suggests that with continued meditation this region of the brain can become rich in gray matter density. An attribute that is responsible for lesser mind wandering. Research also suggests that there is an inverse correlation between mindfulness meditation and mind wandering. Do you wonder where you can find good recipes for developing mindfulness? Consider sufism, dhikr and meditation as cures.

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  by  Samuel Peters 

Understanding Superposition

Understanding ordinary Physics can be quite cumbersome at times. This can be true even for the brightest of the students. There can be a lot of concepts in various topics that may demand a lot of curious scrutiny even if you are studying the basic ideas. Moreover, a very important subject such as theoretical physics may not only sound difficult but also quite boring to the whimsical adolescent who is slowly creeping out of the teen years and would be soon going to the university. What adds to the misery of the student is that how the subject matter is made to appear so esoteric to comprehend while it is orchestrated. 

We had a very nice teacher named Professor Dr. Faiz-ul-Hassan. He used to quote one of his own Swedish teachers while he was a post graduate student that any subject in the world can be explained to any student in a way in which appears easy for him/her to understand. Indeed, Dr. Faiz used to teach very well. I still remember that in his class even the most mischievous of us used to sit and listen to the lectures very quietly and attentively. This is quite remarkable given the lack of interest students generally had in any kind of academic activity. He used to teach us difficult subjects and we used to find them interesting and easy.

A couple of days ago I came across a very nice article that discussed quantum mechanics in the context of human consciousness and its survival after death. The article was quite timely for me because I was wondering how quantum mechanics was connected to consciousness. Even though I could say, "I know what you mean" as an expression in a discourse, I really did not nearly have a clear understanding of superposition and its repercussions on the study of consciousness. Consciousness is recently being acknowledged by science and it would be appropriate to think that any serious student of consciousness should try to understand quantum physics to some extent. It is one of the various ways at looking at the survival of consciousness after bodily death.

So the explanation of superposition was given with the help of a cartoon and I found it very useful, informative and funny at the same time. Even though I had read a little bit about superposition before in the context of quantum cryptography, but I had never understood it so well before. The cartoon is as follows:

If you have seen this cartoon you may definitely have understood superposition and I can bet that you must definitely have enjoyed the cartoon. It just takes a little bit of curiosity to appreciate such work. So giving an explanation of superposition now is rather redundant. I also think that I cannot write an explanation of superposition as nicely as it has been explained by the old man in the cartoon. However, I am going to write down my own understanding of superposition only to gain a little bit of self satisfaction. You can skip this article now if you wish or you may keep on reading it if you wish to leave a nice remark at the end of article.

So what superposition tells us that matter can behave in weird ways. Depending on the circumstances it can retain its physical form or it may also convert into energy. It can exhibit a particle like behavior and it may also act like a wave. This view is endorsed with a so called double slit experiment. What the old man does is that he shows us something with the help of a slit placed between a source of white balls of some sort and a black board on the other. When the balls are fired towards the board some of them strike with the sides of the slit and are deflected away, while a few pass through the slit and form a line-like pattern on the board resembling the shape of the slit through which they passed. 

He then replaces the single slit with a plate that has two slits instead and repeats the experiment. As expected what we notice is that two bands are formed on the wall resembling the shapes of the slits. He argues that this is an intuitive result. 

In the next stage of the experiment what he does is that he replaces the source of balls with an electron gun. So in the single slit experiment a single band is formed resembling the slit. However, in the two-slit experiment, multiple bands are formed as opposed to the two that were intuitively expected. He argues that this seemingly counter-intuitive result is also intuitive. He argues that the electrons exhibit wavelike motion while traveling towards the plate. As they pass through the slits, some of them reinforce each other and while others annihilate each other through constructive and destructive interference respectively. The result is multiple bands as can be seen on the board.

In the next stage of the experiment he starts firing single electron at a time from the gun. He does so to figure out if the electrons behave differently when they are fired in isolation. What he figures out is that same sort of multiple bands are formed again. He argues that while some electrons are deflected and while some pass through one slit and while others pass through the others, the over all result is a number of bands. He owes this to the wave like nature of electrons as they travel to the board (which is possibly a fluorescent screen of some kind that illuminates as electrons strike it). 

The last step of the experiment is crucial. In this step what he does is that he fixes some sort of the detector along side the slitted plated. He does so in the hope of observing the behavior of the electrons as they pass through the slits. To much of his surprise, what he finds is that two bands are formed on the board. He finds this surprising and expects us to be surprised also because he concludes that this time the electrons exhibited a particle type behavior. He concludes that under special circumstances electrons can exhibit either a wavelike or a particle-like behavior. Moreover, he concludes that all matter is capable of exhibiting such behavior.

To us such behavior has far reaching consequences viz a viz human consciousness. It means that in a theoretical sense it might be possible that we humans, which are normally observable as physical beings with flesh and bones, might as well be able to exist other than that too. The question that what was that detector made of that made the electrons so shy that they blushed away from acting like waves demands us to brush up our quantum physics a little bit. Teaching difficult subjects with the help of cartoons like the one above is indeed a very remarkable way of teaching.

 

Psyops by PsyopsPrime is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.psyops.tk/.
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  by  superdeath 

Your Best Self

Your perception of your "self" can play a great role in how well or poorly you do in various endeavors you undertake in your life. I am using the term "self" with quotation marks particularly to pay emphasis. First of all it is important to have an almost precise understanding of the term "self" itself, if not "the self". Here I have used the term "self" to refer to the topic or to the self in general, whereas the term "the self" is used to refer to a particular self. The self has been a subject of considerable philosophical scrutiny since millennia. Many thinkers have thought and written huge treatises on it. The topic also draws great attention in teachings of various religions. So what does the self mean?

It is your inner personality that distinguishes you from others. The self is something that makes you unique. The strength of your character, things you are good at, your virtues, your fears, your audacity, your goals, your memories and the way you respond to various stimuli on a moment by moment basis in your life forms your self. 

This is possibly a brief and a comprehensive explanation of the term self. If you have understood this explanation well, it should not be very difficult to understand your own self. However, the story is not that simple. Bewildered? Even if you are not confused at the moment I promise that you will be quite confused by the time you reach the end of the next paragraph. And if it does not confuse you or shake your beliefs about your "self" or "the self" as a topic, you are either a well read person with an elevated acumen for philosophical thinking or you are a bit too naive to comprehend all this academic mumbo jumbo concerning the self. Don't mind, many people are like that.

Even if you have tried hard to understand your self, you may be living in an illusion about it. Actually there was an article in The Scientific American Mind recently that was titled The Self Illsuion. According to this article everything you experience in your life is merely an illusion. In simple terms this means that you are living in an illusion no matter whatever perception you have about yourself. A more complex explanation is that the pain you have due to a severe injury is also merely an illusion. Would it be alright to infer from this that your whole existence, or the very fact that you believe that you exist as you are reading this article and your whole being is merely an illusion? You'd rather that this is the right conclusion.

Looking at the self from the vantage point of contemporary philosophers and the article posted in Scientific American Mind is definitely perplexing. However, you can simplify this discourse by making a few ordinary assumptions. You can assume that you are real and that all of your pains and pleasures are also real and consequently your self is also real. Having agreed on these simple assumptions we now try to see on as to what forms a good or a bad self. You will find that things are still quite complicated. Keep on reading to learn more.

Your self deceives you in many ways. You can do a few simple thought experiments to find out the various deceptions it plays on you. Stand in front of a mirror while you are combing your hair and while you are all dressed up in the best clothes you have. You do such a thing everyday. Now listen to that inner voice that tells you all the great and cool things about yourself. That is how your self is being dishonest with you while trying to beguile you about all the good stuff that you are actually not. Do you feel like disagreeing with this judgement? Let us see why you should not.

At once tell yourself to deliver a speech to an audience comprised of arbitrarily chosen people on a randomly and instantaneously chosen article. Think about it very strongly that you have to perform this activity very soon. As soon as you give this command to yourself you will find your self telling weird things to you about yourself and the speech you have to undertake. Indeed, if you do not have any public speaking exposure or if you are a novice speaker, a myriad of negative thoughts must definitely have stampeded through your mind at this moment. 

You are getting nervous. You try to find an excuse. You think that you are obviously great but making a speech is totally out of question. You tell people that you are good at cracking jokes with friends but you are definitely not going to make this speech because you believe that there is something really so bad about public speaking that it should not be done at all. You may even say that this whole public speaking is completely crap and that everyone should abandon it. 

These are all lame excuses. The truth is that deep inside your self is telling you that you really can not make this speech at all. It is telling you all the bad things about your voice and appearance. It may as well be telling you that how goofy you may look like when you actually stand up on the stage to make that speech. Just imagine yourself standing behind the dice while the clamor of claps from the audience strikes your ears. You think of your self as a dumb donkey, a designer's dummy standing on the stage with absolutely no clue about what you have to say. You even curse the moment when you stood in front of that mirror and thought about yourself as being something of value. It all started from there.

However, the truth is that your self is playing against you again and telling you all the bad things about you that you are actually not. This is the illusion of the self when you believe with considerable confidence in the assumption that you made earlier that you exist along with all your mental faculties intact and in good order.

The crux of the discourse we have had so far is that your self tells you good things about yourself while in reality that might not be the case. At the same time it can tell you bad things about yourself while actually you are not too bad either. Actually as a matter of fact, by continuous practice in trying to improve upon a few things you can become better and better.

Now try to relax! If you have read it so far, you have made great progress. Even if you have not understood everything in this article, it is alright. The mere fact that you have been reading this article till this point means that your curiosity has drawn your considerable attention to the subject matter this article is trying to cover. You need to be complemented about this. Congratulations!

Assuming that you have understood that your self deceives you in ways that you do not understand well, you have to find some remedies. In this paragraph and in what follows we can try to find a few remedies. First of all try to learn to relax. having a relaxed personality can enhance your performance manifold at many tasks. In order to develop a relaxed personality that you can do many things. However, I presume that meditation is one of the best cures. There are many meditation techniques that are available online and you can choose the one that suits you the best.

The second thing is to work hard. There is no shortcut to hard work. And with hard and persistent effort you can achieve anything you can conceive and that your heart can believe. The third thing is to do what you love to do. This has been emphasized by many gurus and success preachers. It is a self evident truth that there is nothing you can do well than what you love to do. 

Having said this, the fourth advice is to try to pursue decent goals and develop humane ambitions. This is quite self explanatory. The fifth thing is to try to learn to be confident. Actually if you pay due heed to the above advice, self confidence will automatically follow. Never mind if you are low on self confidence right now. Just try to console yourself with the idea that everyone suffers from this syndrome time and again. There are a few who are perpetual sufferers and there are many who have recurring episodes of low self confidence. The sixth advice is that while you should not overestimate yourself you should not do the converse as well. 

The last tip is to try to understand that your self plays tricks on you. This means that while you should not believe that you are Hercules, you should also not think about yourself to be completely irrelevant. When that happens with you, think that anyone can have these kinds of feelings. Even as I am approaching the end of this article, there is already a plan developing in mind to tell me that how the heck did I manage to write this article at all. Always remember that your best self is when you are cool, calm and confident on the day when you actually have to deliver that speech you were really scared of.




Psyops by PsyopsPrime is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://psyops.tk/.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://psyops.tk/.

  by  GaggieITMI 

Understanding Human Consciousness

I recently patched up a small research proposal titled Understanding Human Consciousness. It is a five pages long draft in pdf format. I think it is nice and can be improved by the passage of time. My interest in neuroscience grew between 2008 and 2009 while I started reading books about self help. Awaken the Giant Within was the first book that I read on this subject. It is a brilliant book but I believe that there is a lot more to neuroscience than feeling good alone. 

As I progressed further on the way I cam across ideas of Ray Kurzweil about downloading human consciousness on to computers. I also came across the books of Marvin Minsky which I think are very nice. Emotion Machine and Society of the Mind are two of his really nice books that are worth mentioning. Unfortunately I could not finish reading both of them.

The journey did not stop here. In 2011 I had a chance to read Sam Harris. I would again like to mention that he raises very cogent questions in his The End of Faith. It is indeed a very thought provoking book. Specially the questions he raises about why people believe in one religion or the other are rousing. His concern that such beliefs should be explainable by reason is rational. The other question he raises is that whether any afterlife exists or not. Although I would like to assert that he himself is quite judgmental about that question already.

As the reading journey continued I had a chance to read Irfan. Irfan introduced me to Western Spiritualism. From Irfan I came to know about the various contemporaries of Charles Darwin who were spiritualists and believed in an afterlife. Most notable among these are Alfred Russel Wallace and Sir Conan Doyle. It was quite interesting to read from The History of Spiritualism that he attributed much of the world's misery to materialism and advocated for the adoption of some kind of religion by the humanity. It was quite interesting for me to know this as I thought materialists, or so to say atheists, to be a lot more benign people before this.

Anyhow, introduction to spiritualism gave me a chance to read and skim through many academic papers regarding invocation of spirits and souls, and other aspects related to spiritualism. For instance, there are quite a few tracks in spiritualism that study the ectoplasm, a viscous material that possibly comes out of the mouths of the mediums as they communicate with the dead. Similarly, there are also papers that study the minds of mediums to figure out what sort of people are more conducive for becoming mediums. 

I do not remember the source of the papers but I am sure they can be found through the website of Society of Psychical Research. In the meantime I have also been reading papers on neuroscience from the point of view of mental and physical health as well. They are quite numerous. The conclusion they draw is that most of the mental and physical functions of human body and personality are localized in the brain and that there is no evidence for the presence of a non-physical mind i.e. a soul or a spirit. The burden of coming up with a proof is normally left with the reader.

So given this I thought that I should at least write a research proposal that could sum up all the reading I have been doing over the years. I think that it looks nice. It does not have any citations or references at the moment and I hope to be able to add a few citations by the due course of time. Here is the link to the proposal.

  by  ezhikoff