This is a case of self causality. It is self referential and is a singularity of the self... aka The Observer!
Personal Disclosure: Let there be light!
POOFT! Satan appears.....
Satan: [insert doubt here!] OMFG ??? YAWN!!! Who turned the light on?
OL: Hello SATAN! My shadow self. Good question! ... please entertain yourself with these amusing facts...
Satan: Yeah OK ... but what about Hume?
OL: Hume forgot about open doorways which are the object of which is also the features ... its called a HOLE!
Satan: Oh... I didn't think about that!
OL: That is the 1st thing you have been correct on at all ... because I AM the one who thinked in the 1st place ...you are johnny come lately ... and
2ndly Hume was wrong.... therefor you are incorrect! You need to start focusing on the WHOLE instead of the HOLE's!
Satan: ...... [vanishes into a deep dark hole within the whole!]
OL: Oh Goodness I am myself again! That was too easy! Next Time I'm doing this same universe on HARD setting ... normal is too weak!
Now where is that reset button? Oh yes there it is ...
Descartes was there first. That's what science is missing today: Philosophy...The father of science.
Reminds me, did ya hear the one about Descartes?
Descartes goes into a coffee shop and orders a cuppa. The waitress asks him if he would like a beignet with his cuppa and Descartes says, "I think
not." and disappears.
"According to Descartes, only humans combine res cogitans (the stuff of consciousness) with res extensa (material stuff). Animals, which he refers
to as 'brutes', are nothing more than unconscious machines."iv Accordingly, Descartes' followers had no compunctions about nailing dogs up to boards
and cutting them open to see how the parts worked, understanding their cries of pain as nothing more than the wheezing of bellows and the creaking of
wheels. Fontenelle, one of Descartes' contemporaries, describes it like this: "They administered beatings to dogs with perfect indifference, and made
fun of those who pitied the creatures as if they had felt pain. They said that the animals were clocks; that the cries they emitted when struck, were
only the noise of a little spring which had been touched, but that the whole body was without feeling. They nailed poor animals up on boards by their
four paws to vivisect them and see the circulation of the blood."
-- Max Velmans
By this logic, the other objects of the universe, including living ones, do not really matter. They lack something that the self possesses. Morality
applies to them no more than it applies to a blender, a clock. Suppose I take a soft plastic toy cat and replace its squeaker with a device that when
squeezed made a sound just like a cat in mortal agony. When I stamp on it with my boot, I am not really causing suffering, only the appearance of
suffering. I haven't done anything immoral (a little twisted, maybe, but not evil). If animals and indeed the entire universe are similarly insensate,
bearing only the illusion of feeling, then the same moral license applies to the whole universe. Such is the implacable conclusion of the Galilean
banishment of the subjective from the realm of scientific reality.
-- Charles Eisenstein; Max Velmans' quote taken from same source.
Descartes *was* really a great guy, it's true. He's one of the main reasons why I have such warm and fuzzy feelings in my heart towards Atheism, as
well. I suspect he's also a real superstar among PETA.
edit on 5-9-2011 by petrus4 because: (no reason given)