"Four philosophical questions to make your brain hurt"

[Daz]

They aren't that bad, but good for a musing never the less. Snippets:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7739493.stm

1. SHOULD WE KILL HEALTHY PEOPLE FOR THEIR ORGANS?

Suppose Bill is a healthy man without family or loved ones. Would it be ok painlessly to kill him if his organs would save five people, one of whom needs a heart, another a kidney, and so on? If not, why not?

2. YOU ARE NOT THE PERSON WHO STARTED READING THIS ARTICLE

Consider a photo of someone you think is you eight years ago. What makes that person you? You might say he she was composed of the same cells as you now. But most of your cells are replaced every seven years. You might instead say you're an organism, a particular human being, and that organisms can survive cell replacement - this oak being the same tree as the sapling I planted last year.

3. IS THAT REALLY A COMPUTER SCREEN IN FRONT OF YOU?

What reason do you have to believe there's a computer screen in front of you? Presumably that you see it, or seem to. But our senses occasionally mislead us. A straight stick half-submerged in water sometimes look bent; two equally long lines sometimes look different lengths.

4. YOU DID NOT FREELY AND RESPONSIBLY CHOOSE TO READ THIS ARTICLE

Suppose that Fred existed shortly after the Big Bang. He had unlimited intelligence and memory, and knew all the scientific laws governing the universe and all the properties of every particle that then existed. Thus equipped, billions of years ago, he could have worked out that, eventually, planet Earth would come to exist, that you would too, and that right now you would be reading this article.

Go, ponder!

[iCraig]

[kaiowas]

No 4 pretty much sums up my view of existence. Nothing is random and everything can be predetermined if you have sufficient knowledge.

Of course the problem is that for Fred to store the knowledge of the properties of every particle in existence whatever storage system he used would have to comprise of more particles than are in existence making such knowledge impossible to hold.

[semi-pro waster]

Interesting but it is best designed to employ philosophers* rather than to actually determine any universal truths if a) such things exist and b) are what we should be aiming for since random pondering can be rather entertaining by itself.

*Rather like a lot of such subjects, take criminology for instance. Some fascinating theories have been propounded as to why crime is committed and the sum total of the number that have been accepted in a useful sense is zero, zip, nada, none...etc etc.

[Fayshun]

[Creature]

1. No
2. Of course i'm not, I was dissapointed half way through because I have to get up at 6am
3. No, it's a LCD tv
4. Probably not.

[Daz]

Originally Posted by kaiowas

No 4 pretty much sums up my view of existence. Nothing is random and everything can be predetermined if you have sufficient knowledge.

Of course the problem is that for Fred to store the knowledge of the properties of every particle in existence whatever storage system he used would have to comprise of more particles than are in existence making such knowledge impossible to hold.

I once read a theory along similar lines - it suggested that if you knew the position, direction and speed of every particle in the universe at any given moment, you could predict the movement of the universe (and everything it) for all time. Attaining that knowledge would however be impossible, because the closer you get to determining position, the further you are from knowing direction or speed, closer to speed, further from position etc etc

[Fayshun]

Serious answer, now I am recaffeinated.

1. No, Bill has the right to life. As Spok said, sometimes the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.

2. I am greater than the sum of my parts. Even though "I" get replaced every 7 years, I am still me.

3. My perception is it's a computer screen. That's good enough for me, I don't care/need to know about others perception. Like colour blindness, it's alien to me, and I don't care!

4. Fred cannot exist. To know everything about everything in the universe, he'd have to be bigger and more complex than the universe.

[A Place of Light]

1. There is no sliding scale of value to life.
2. Some of the parts on my car have been replaced since I bought it. It is still my car. The get-out-of-jail-free card in this question, is the use of the word "some".
3. The example is based on perspective, whereas my monitor (or lack of) is not.
4. Fred's existance is paradox enough, without complicating matters further.