Here's a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It's not the one you might think it is. Agree with him or not, I personally can't find much to disagree with here, he was one hell of a fine speaker. Where the hell have all the good speakers disappeared to, anyway?
Check out Jud's MySpace page. Some cool music, including one about MLK!
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Amoral science
Is science amoral? So I was taught in school, lo these many years ago, and so many atheists and skeptics keep telling us. However, the more I think about this, the less certain I become that it's really so. First let's summarize.
When we say science is amoral, what we mean is something like this. The act of science, i.e. of using the scientific method, of doing the process of science, carries no moral implications. You can't say that observing, forming a hypothesis, testing it experimentally, revising it, testing it, and so on, hopefully eventually netting a theory is moral or immoral, it simply is. It's a method and that set of steps is morally neutral. Fair enough. For the sake of argument, let's go with this.
However, I find a curious thing. Several people, I'm certainly not the first, have suggested that the atheist concern for religion as violence is somewhat narrow, since science has given us some pretty messed up things as well, the typical example is the atomic bomb though others could certainly be educed, e.g. chemical warfare agents and so on. To this atheists typically respond that you can't blame science, because science is amoral. I think however that this response ignores something very important. Namely, people do science. It as though we were saying, he killed a man with that gun!, and somebody responds yeah, but you can't blame that, the gun is amoral, it's just the bullet responding to forces and all.
This is true but I hope my objection becomes readily apparent. We may not blame the gun, as it were, but we can indeed, and do, blame the person for using that gun to kill. Now let's take a look at science. What do we say of a person who is told by their employer, make me a nerve gas that will do painful things X Y and Z to people and eventually kill them? Do we say, oh, don't blame him, he was just fascinated by the scientific puzzle of it all, the interesting chemistry involved in how to get a molecule to behave in that manner, how to get it to interact with a nervous system just so? I should certainly hope not!
So two related things seem to be going on here. Because the method of science is amoral, its products seem to be considered amoral. Why? Because they are produced with an amoral method. It's almost as though we're saying, well, unfortunately it just so happens that this particular chemical compound kills humans in a horribly painful manner. Similarly, the potential victims of that compound become moral blanks. It is not a father, a wife, a child, a family which will be affected by this compound, it is "the human nervous system", as though the human nervous system were some abstract thing floating in ethereal space. Since we only have moral issues when dealing with living beings, I assume here that living means conscious also, and the human nervous system is not "living" as such, our putative chemical neurotoxin can have no moral implications whatsoever.
To an extent this is true, were our putative nerve gas found in nature it would just so happen to be deadly to humans. However, what's being missed here is that all of this involves people. Recall that a scientist is developing this gas. So, a scientist, a person, must decide, yeah, this sounds like a perfectly fine idea. In other words, by removing people from the equation, we attempt to remove moral culpibility. Science, however, cannot exist without people. It is a thing practiced and implemented by people. People came up with the scientific method. It is not a thing found in the universe, like a chunk of rock or a star or something. To be sure ideas are part of the universe. However, let's examine the implications of this.
People often say, to those horrified by nuclear weapons something trite like, well you can't put the genie back in its bottle. Then they may further tell you something about science and its supposed amorality, implying that hey, this nuclear force stuff is just there, you can help or harm with it, and gosh golly, sooner or later, somebody would figure out how to harm with it. To my mind, this entirely misses the point. Yes the force is there. Yes it may be directed to any end to which we are capable of directing it. That isn't the question. The question is, should we direct it to that end in the first place?
Some may object at this point. Our putative nerve gas, if altered, may cure neurological diseases. The atomic bomb, so far as I know, gave birth to nuclear power, and so on. This seems to assume, at worst, that the destructive applications must precede the constructive ones, or at best, that the destructive ones are somehow mitigated by the later constructive applications. In any case we preserve the supposed amorality of science, again a chemical was "discovered", a use of a force of nature was "discovered", as though it was just lying around rather than being a unique compound made by us, or as though we didn't make the machine that directed the force to kill, and because of that discovery we've cured some neurological diseases or gained nuclear energy. Except of course these are really new discoveries, alterations of the original deadly ones.
Again this seems to simply be avoiding the question. If you know, as a scientist, that your creation will be used exclusively to kill, or nearly so, shouldn't you be asking yourself whether it's a good idea, dare I say whether it is moral?, to make it in the first place? Could we not have discovered nuclear power without making bombs first? Thus I must conclude: the scientific method is amoral ... science, however, is intimately bound up with morality. The sooner we recognize this, the better off we'll be. The sooner we quit objecting to the idea that, as one person put it, science is more likely to bring about the apocalypse than religion, with the notion of science's supposed amorality, the more likely we'll be to recognize the dangers involved with our uses of science.
Note: When I say "living" and "conscious" above, as an animist I likely have wider definitions of such terms than the average person. I am not suggesting of course that we cease to, say, use trees if we deem them conscious, and no animist society has done so, considering it to be an immoral act. In general dead trees are used or protocols are used to attempt to assure that the spirit of the tree approves of its body being killed and used. I offer this not as a starting point for a debate on animism, nor as a conversion attempt, but simply to suggest that even if we accept a wider definition of living beings and thus have more issues of morality arise from this acceptance, there are still perfectly moral ways to do the things we as humans do on a regular basis. It is not necessary to suggest that since trees are alive we quit killing them damn it!, and go live in caves or something. We would still be perfectly capable of building houses and the like.
When we say science is amoral, what we mean is something like this. The act of science, i.e. of using the scientific method, of doing the process of science, carries no moral implications. You can't say that observing, forming a hypothesis, testing it experimentally, revising it, testing it, and so on, hopefully eventually netting a theory is moral or immoral, it simply is. It's a method and that set of steps is morally neutral. Fair enough. For the sake of argument, let's go with this.
However, I find a curious thing. Several people, I'm certainly not the first, have suggested that the atheist concern for religion as violence is somewhat narrow, since science has given us some pretty messed up things as well, the typical example is the atomic bomb though others could certainly be educed, e.g. chemical warfare agents and so on. To this atheists typically respond that you can't blame science, because science is amoral. I think however that this response ignores something very important. Namely, people do science. It as though we were saying, he killed a man with that gun!, and somebody responds yeah, but you can't blame that, the gun is amoral, it's just the bullet responding to forces and all.
This is true but I hope my objection becomes readily apparent. We may not blame the gun, as it were, but we can indeed, and do, blame the person for using that gun to kill. Now let's take a look at science. What do we say of a person who is told by their employer, make me a nerve gas that will do painful things X Y and Z to people and eventually kill them? Do we say, oh, don't blame him, he was just fascinated by the scientific puzzle of it all, the interesting chemistry involved in how to get a molecule to behave in that manner, how to get it to interact with a nervous system just so? I should certainly hope not!
So two related things seem to be going on here. Because the method of science is amoral, its products seem to be considered amoral. Why? Because they are produced with an amoral method. It's almost as though we're saying, well, unfortunately it just so happens that this particular chemical compound kills humans in a horribly painful manner. Similarly, the potential victims of that compound become moral blanks. It is not a father, a wife, a child, a family which will be affected by this compound, it is "the human nervous system", as though the human nervous system were some abstract thing floating in ethereal space. Since we only have moral issues when dealing with living beings, I assume here that living means conscious also, and the human nervous system is not "living" as such, our putative chemical neurotoxin can have no moral implications whatsoever.
To an extent this is true, were our putative nerve gas found in nature it would just so happen to be deadly to humans. However, what's being missed here is that all of this involves people. Recall that a scientist is developing this gas. So, a scientist, a person, must decide, yeah, this sounds like a perfectly fine idea. In other words, by removing people from the equation, we attempt to remove moral culpibility. Science, however, cannot exist without people. It is a thing practiced and implemented by people. People came up with the scientific method. It is not a thing found in the universe, like a chunk of rock or a star or something. To be sure ideas are part of the universe. However, let's examine the implications of this.
People often say, to those horrified by nuclear weapons something trite like, well you can't put the genie back in its bottle. Then they may further tell you something about science and its supposed amorality, implying that hey, this nuclear force stuff is just there, you can help or harm with it, and gosh golly, sooner or later, somebody would figure out how to harm with it. To my mind, this entirely misses the point. Yes the force is there. Yes it may be directed to any end to which we are capable of directing it. That isn't the question. The question is, should we direct it to that end in the first place?
Some may object at this point. Our putative nerve gas, if altered, may cure neurological diseases. The atomic bomb, so far as I know, gave birth to nuclear power, and so on. This seems to assume, at worst, that the destructive applications must precede the constructive ones, or at best, that the destructive ones are somehow mitigated by the later constructive applications. In any case we preserve the supposed amorality of science, again a chemical was "discovered", a use of a force of nature was "discovered", as though it was just lying around rather than being a unique compound made by us, or as though we didn't make the machine that directed the force to kill, and because of that discovery we've cured some neurological diseases or gained nuclear energy. Except of course these are really new discoveries, alterations of the original deadly ones.
Again this seems to simply be avoiding the question. If you know, as a scientist, that your creation will be used exclusively to kill, or nearly so, shouldn't you be asking yourself whether it's a good idea, dare I say whether it is moral?, to make it in the first place? Could we not have discovered nuclear power without making bombs first? Thus I must conclude: the scientific method is amoral ... science, however, is intimately bound up with morality. The sooner we recognize this, the better off we'll be. The sooner we quit objecting to the idea that, as one person put it, science is more likely to bring about the apocalypse than religion, with the notion of science's supposed amorality, the more likely we'll be to recognize the dangers involved with our uses of science.
Note: When I say "living" and "conscious" above, as an animist I likely have wider definitions of such terms than the average person. I am not suggesting of course that we cease to, say, use trees if we deem them conscious, and no animist society has done so, considering it to be an immoral act. In general dead trees are used or protocols are used to attempt to assure that the spirit of the tree approves of its body being killed and used. I offer this not as a starting point for a debate on animism, nor as a conversion attempt, but simply to suggest that even if we accept a wider definition of living beings and thus have more issues of morality arise from this acceptance, there are still perfectly moral ways to do the things we as humans do on a regular basis. It is not necessary to suggest that since trees are alive we quit killing them damn it!, and go live in caves or something. We would still be perfectly capable of building houses and the like.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Godsawful mbira playing
Wow! Why am I not asleep? You tell me. So I decided to play mbira from Berkina Faso and record it. Henry should particularly appreciate this since I've critiqued any number of his recordings. Let me return the favor to myself. But first, let's hear the recording, so we all know what I'm talking about.
OK, first of all, wow, do I need to work on some timing or what? Dynamics too. I think I hit some keys better than others. I have to find a better way to hold the instrument or something. Another aspect which relates to timing is rhythm. This is a two-fold problem. One is that I need to maintain a rhythm, and this is both a problem of timing and dynamics. The second issue is that I apparently completely suck ass at transitioning from one sort of rhythm to another. Still, I think there are some nice ideas in here. Needs a hell of a lot of work though. I give it a three out of ten. Good scale, good ideas, sort of has parts where it goes along nicely, but you can really hear that I haven't mastered the subtleties yet. I think basically it's got some strong stuff, but it really needs work to get consistently musical. Practice, practice, practice. That is your uncle Khomus' musical motto for the new year.
Your beloved uncle Khomus confesses humbly, he's a slacker, and this piece shows how and why. I think I get distracted by the coolness and don't really focus on making it great the way it should be. Recording a lot more, even one offs like this, will definitely help me improve. I should add that I'm pretty tired and I basically sat down and just bashed this out in the minute or so the recording lasts. It could also use some equalization and stuff to sound better, but I'm not so worried about that part yet since this was just screwing around. Part of this is also the instrument, some keys are just louder than others, and I'm sure part of it is the frequency distribution in the recording, that root bass note really is loud and some decent equalization would help bring everything in line. That's also something I'll have to work on, just the differences between what you hear and how it comes out in the recording equipment and how you change it back to something more like what you hear. All of that having been said, it looks like it's time to really buckle down and slog through the technical aspects of getting my playing up to some sort of acceptable level. Luckily since I like the basics of what I'm doing already, that should make it easier. Still though, by all the gods, there's a fair spot of work to be done, ain't?
OK, first of all, wow, do I need to work on some timing or what? Dynamics too. I think I hit some keys better than others. I have to find a better way to hold the instrument or something. Another aspect which relates to timing is rhythm. This is a two-fold problem. One is that I need to maintain a rhythm, and this is both a problem of timing and dynamics. The second issue is that I apparently completely suck ass at transitioning from one sort of rhythm to another. Still, I think there are some nice ideas in here. Needs a hell of a lot of work though. I give it a three out of ten. Good scale, good ideas, sort of has parts where it goes along nicely, but you can really hear that I haven't mastered the subtleties yet. I think basically it's got some strong stuff, but it really needs work to get consistently musical. Practice, practice, practice. That is your uncle Khomus' musical motto for the new year.
Your beloved uncle Khomus confesses humbly, he's a slacker, and this piece shows how and why. I think I get distracted by the coolness and don't really focus on making it great the way it should be. Recording a lot more, even one offs like this, will definitely help me improve. I should add that I'm pretty tired and I basically sat down and just bashed this out in the minute or so the recording lasts. It could also use some equalization and stuff to sound better, but I'm not so worried about that part yet since this was just screwing around. Part of this is also the instrument, some keys are just louder than others, and I'm sure part of it is the frequency distribution in the recording, that root bass note really is loud and some decent equalization would help bring everything in line. That's also something I'll have to work on, just the differences between what you hear and how it comes out in the recording equipment and how you change it back to something more like what you hear. All of that having been said, it looks like it's time to really buckle down and slog through the technical aspects of getting my playing up to some sort of acceptable level. Luckily since I like the basics of what I'm doing already, that should make it easier. Still though, by all the gods, there's a fair spot of work to be done, ain't?
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)