Rebirth and Karma Rethought

I posted this on a forum I frequent. It's a critique of orthodox Buddhist concepts of karma and rebirth. I suggest a more metephorical approach to these Buddhist doctrines, so that one can both be a Buddhist and in harmony with science.

9/14/09 Note: I have since come to realize that this article is almost entirely in error, and misconstrues Buddhist views. I still like the idea of a more metaphorical bent being extended towards reincarnation, but don't read this article for a view of Buddhism. I leave it as an example of poor fact checking.

I was originally writing this as a response to Scameter's thread about past lives, but thought that my response was long enough, and strayed far enough from the topic of past lives at times, that it would be judicious to simply start a new thread. Bear with me--the post is rather long. In it, I first embark on a critique of karma and rebirth as they are usually viewed by orthodox Buddhists, and then offer a new view based on a looser interpretation of these concepts.

I consider myself to be a philosophical Buddhist (although I don’t practice meditation nearly as often as I should) as far as my perspectives on clinging, not-self, impermanence, etc are concerned. Rebirth and Karma, however, are where I disagree most sharply with the orthodox Buddhist perspective, and where I think that Buddhism often strays closest to pseudo-science (although I think that Buddhism is, as a rule of thumb, generally much more compatible with science than other religions).

First of all, I think that Buddhists commit a philosophical error when they say that Karma is "basically just" Newton's third law. I think that Karma is only vaguely and metaphorically comparable to some aspects of the Law. What Newton's third law really says has nothing at all to do with Karma. It says that for any quantity of mass multiplied by a particular acceleration vector (force) there exists a force vector of identical magnitude both in a direction such that the dot product of the two vectors is 1, and there exists another force vector that is identical to the original vector multiplied by a scalar quantity of minus 1. This is admittedly a clumsy way of stating the law. However, the way that I have stated it shows that unless one believes that karmic law is expressible entirely in terms of vectors, scalars, magnitudes, etc, Newton's laws and karmic law are completely different animals, connected in only a metaphorical sense.

Nor is Karma, as the concept is used in Buddhism, identical to the scientific notion of causality, although causality is, perhaps, the closest translation of the Buddhist term. There are many who believe in causality, but don't believe in that good actions will eventually and invariably lead to positive effects on the agent. Even if you disagree with the individuals who believe this, they seem to believe what they do while committing no obvious contradiction. This shows that Karma is logically independent of the notion of causality.

To believe in Karma is not to simply believe that there are causes and effects. It is to believe that certain sorts of causes have certain sorts of effects. For instance, it is logically possible that bad actions always yielded positive effects on the agent, and that good actions always yielded negative effects on the agent. A belief that this is the case would entail a belief in causality, but not a belief in Karma. To believe in Karma is to believe the opposite--that good and bad action yield positive and negative effects respectively for the agent performing the deeds.

I don't believe that Karma and Rebirth as it is commonly conceived is coherent. First of all, it is easily evident that within the boundaries of a specific lifetime, good is not always reciprocated with good, and evil is not always reciprocated with evil. So, a belief in Karma requires a belief that a bad action is reciprocated by bad effect, but perhaps in another life time. But how is one to verify this? Even those who claim to remember former lives don't remember their actions in enough detail to see if they committed grievous enough a sin to be cursed as they are in this life, or lived good enough a life to deserve the blessings they now experience.

Even having an extensive memory of one’s actions is past lives wouldn't supply one with any proof that the principle of Karma is valid. Let me illustrate why. Let "B" stand for a bad action, "G" stand for a good action, "H" stand for a happy experience, and "S" stand for an unhappy experience, suffering.

Let’s say that upon surveying one's past lives, one saw oneself commit actions B, G, B, G. (two bad, two good actions). In one's current life, one experiences H, H, S, S. Presumably, the order of these experiences and actions don't matter much, since "Karmic fruits" can occur either soon after or a long time after an action. Does viewing these experiences count as confirmation of Karma? Can we conclude that two good actions have been reciprocated by two happy experiences, and that two bad actions were reciprocated by two instances of suffering? No! We have no means of establishing that causal relationship. After all, it could have been the bad actions that caused the happy experiences, and the good that caused suffering, for all that we know. Or, alternatively, there could be absolutely not causal relation whatsoever. So, the way that Karma is stated, it cannot be confirmed even by someone who had extensive knowledge of past lives.

A side note—Akamu said in the a former thread:

According to Buddhism, Karma decides everything there is to decide.

I don’t think that Buddhism says this. If Karma decided everything that there was to decide, then Karma would determine actions, thoughts, etc. If Karma determined everything, then there would be no free will, no chance to liberate oneself from Karma. But Buddhism does not traditionally teach that Karma determines events. Rather, it conditions events, meaning that it effects them, but along with other factors. I believe that there is actually a list somewhere of factors that determine events pertaining to rebirth, of which karma was only one. I can’t recall where I read this, or what the factors were, so I may be mistaken.

I’ve covered my philosophical objections to Karma. I also have some ethical objections. Karma appears nice originally, because it says that reward and punishment are worked into existence. But this soon leads to very unfortunate consequences. I left Christianity because I balked at the notion that all Jewish people who died in the Holocaust would go to hell for not accepting Jesus. Karma, as often conceived of, offers an alternative that is little better—all of the innocents who suffered during the holocaust suffered because they did something to deserve it, although that something may well have been in a past life that they do not even remember. I think that this view shows nature not as an ultimately just world filled with a natural system of rewards and punishments, but as a rather tyrannical entity, demanding people be punished for crimes that can’t remember committing.

Now, rebirth. I don’t believe in the orthodox Buddhist view of rebirth, which I believe offer very little improvement of the Hindu concept. Hindu’s thought that there was an immutable self, identity, ego, atman, etc, that traveled from body to body. Buddhism, in contrast, suggests that there is not immutable thing that travels from life to life—merely a continuing stream of consciousness, that travels much like a flame passed between candles, or energy passed between billiard balls. But Buddhists and Hindu’s alike believe that there are distinct strings of lives, and that it is possible to match up a current life with a former life and a next life, regardless of whether or not one believes that there is something immutable that is constant in all of the lives. So, rebirth and reincarnation are actually quite similar in ways.

I believe that both Hindus and Buddhists stray into pseudoscience when they attempts to validate their belief in past lives by referencing personal testimonies, as the Dalai Llama does when he tells the story of the girl who remembers her parents. Experience shows that relying on personal testimonies of others is a poor way to validate a belief in something. Everyone “knows someone who…” was abducted by UFO’s, has a past life, or did such and such. I know that we’ve all read about instances where a person’s memories were supposedly confirmed, but making the generalization that everyone has a past life that they inexplicably can’t remember on the basis of such an extremely small portion of the population strikes me as a poor idea. Even if some child inexplicably remembered a great deal of detail about an individual who died before they were born (and I am skeptical of such accounts) it seems that a bizarre, but still more likely, explanation is that some sort of “psychic remnant” of experiences left on person at death and entered the child, and that this is a rare occurrence than that every single person on earth has numerous past lives. I don’t believe in this, but it’s still a more likely than jumping to the view of past lives on such scant evidence.

How then, can one reinterpret rebirth in a way that does not rely on the limited and problematic view of Karma as I have just critiqued? I believe, simply, that one needs to take the middle way. Let me explain, beginning with two schools of thought about the afterlife that existed in Buddha’s own time—the annihilationists and the eternalists. One believed that the self was finite, and one that the self was eternal. Both, in effect, believed that the Self was like a “light switch” of existence, if you will, where the switch is in the “on” position while one is in existence, and the switch is in the “off position” when one is not in existence. Annihilationists believed that these “ego switches” are turned on one day, stay on for a few decades, and then flip off, and stay in that position forever. Eternalists believed that the switch was on, always was on, and will always be on.

What did Buddha say? That there is no switch. There is not substantial ego, no fact of the matter as to when it is that one entity goes out of existence and another takes its place. Annihilationism and eternalism are two sides of the same coin, two explanations for the same set of facts. However, I belief that soon after, Buddhists slipped into a view of the afterlife much like the Hindu’s. They ceased belief in an enduring ego, but continued to believe that existence is periodic, that there are past and future lives.

But how can one both deny the existence of past and future lives, and still refrain from being an annihilationist? This is the tricky part, and takes a bit of explanation. I think that the boundaries of the self are shifting and fickle things. The orthodox view of Buddhism denies that the self is limited to a specific span of years, or lifetime, but seems to limit a “self” of sorts, to a specific string of lives. Buddhists talk of my past life and your past life. This is evidenced by the fact that Buddha said that anyone you meet could have been a relative of yours in “their” past life. I although this is an expanded view of self, I think that the notion of self can be expanded even further than simply talking about the manner in which it endures or fails to endure through time. A person in your “past life” is sort of you, but not really you. Buddhists would appear to say that the past life of another person isn’t even sort of you. It’s the past life of someone else. Personally, I think that since we all exist in a grand continuum, there is no strict dividing line where the self ends. The line between life and death is a blurry one, and after death, the matter of which you are composed is incorporated into other living entities. One mustn’t fall prey to an argument of the continuum—I was never Abraham Lincoln, even if it was true that I had more than a few of his atoms within me.

Personally, the intimate connection between others and myself, the existence of everything in a continuum, is how I interpret rebirth. I believe in the same set of facts as do scientists—I don’t think that there is anything hidden or ghostly, no kind of special energy of consciousness that emits from you and later becomes the seed of a later life. Rather, I interpret the facts differently, shift definitions and give new connotations. I don’t believe in lives strung out like strings of pearls, but I believe in Indra’s net after a fashion. We are connected in ways that are less than obvious, and any boundary established between self and other is illusory, fickle, and problematic as a metaphysical distinctions, although we can certainly talk about “me” and “you” as a matter of convenience when discussing ethical matters such as responsibility, ownership, etc.

This view ties in nicely with the rest of Buddhism, I think, although it is certainly different than the orthodox view. To awaken (ineffable portions of it aside) is to abandon clinging to temporal contingent views of the self and other matters, cultivate equanimity and kindness, and learn to stay “in between”. That much has not changed. So, I think that it is possible to break the limits set by orthodox views of Karma and rebirth, and still preserve what I believe to be the core of Buddhism—the four noble truths, eightfold path, three traits of existence, dependent origination, etc.

Belief and value

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about believe, meaning, and value. This is due in part to the fact that I’ve recently read William James’s Will to Believe, and just today read Bertrand Russell’s Free Man’s Worship. I found James’s essay particularly interesting and entertaining—James is a great writer, with many highly amusing metaphors (“The pancakes, butter, and syrup of nature seldom leave the plates so clean”). I also found his point an important one. In his opinion, it is acceptable to believe things without concrete evidence in special cases where one is forced to make a choice between two beliefs and has a personal stake in the option. James calls a choice to believe in spite insufficient evidence “willing to believe”. I shall call it faith, as it’s shorter and easier to write. Examples that he gave of things that were candidates to be believed in this way were religious and moral truths. Personally, I feel that religion often strays too far into matters of fact to be confirmed in the way that James suggests. I don’t believe that we should accepts things such as the Genesis story by faith, nor do I believe that we should use faith to bolster a belief in a God with lists of attributes such as omnipotence and omniscience.

But are there not some propositions that one might justifiably believe to be true before evidence presents itself? It’s a trickier issue that it might appear to be at first glance. Although ones gut reaction is to balk at the idea of believing in anything without evidence, there are a few scenarios where one might be quite tempted to “will to believe”. Specifically, I think that matters of value are likely candidates for propositions to be believed without evidence. Why? Well, first of all, I’m not sure whether it is even possible to confirm empirically whether a human life is more valuable than a bowl of porridge, and I’m certainly not waiting to find out before I believe that it’s true. Although I am opposed to believing anything without justification in justification is to be had, I will make an exception where value is concerned. It is, as James calls it, a forced option. Whether or not we believe other lives have value matters now. We don’t have the luxury to wait and see whether or not it is scientifically confirmable.

Is it possible to “scientifically” confirm whether things have value? I’m not sure. I don’t think that matters of value are in the domain of science as ordinarily conceived—matters of value seem different than chemistry, biology, or even psychology. But is value in the domain of science if “science” is taken in its philosophical sense—all things that can be gleaned off experience? Suppose for a second that one cannot tell from experience whether or not things have value. Then how in the world is it that one first becomes acquainted with the notion that some things have value? It seems to me that the belief that things have value is based on some sort of feeling, and feelings, of course, are things that are experienced.

But how does one go from acknowledging certain feelings about things to concluding that things really do have value? I’m not at all sure how this step is to be taken. Yet, as I have before stated, I don’t think that value is something that one can afford to be unbiased about, because it is of so direct and drastic a consequence.

Introduction to Determinism and Quantum Mechanics

The following is an email I sent to my friend Bryant Johnson a conversation we had about determinism. There are no pictures, so I might have to adjust the writting a bit later, so it's more stand alone. A good deal of what I know about the philosophy of quantum mechanics is due to the first section of a spendid book by Hans Reichenbach called, "Philosophic Foundations of Quantum Mechanics".

Dear Bryant,

I’m writing this in response to the conversation we had outside of Hyde dorm yesterday. I’m writing about how scientific discoveries within the last hundred years have done much to undermine notions of determinism which were largely accepted in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Before I embark on an explanation, of course realize that I am more of a philosopher than a physicist, and thus do not pretend to have too firm a grasp on quantum mechanics, especially as formulated mathematically. I will endeavor to limit myself to explaining some of the more basic elements of quantum mechanics in order to avoid wandering into areas where my knowledge is far less trustworthy. As I always say, to know what you’re talking about, talk about what you know.

Before addressing whether or not our world is a deterministic one, it’s an essential first step to talk about what determinism means, as the word is used in different senses in different settings. Specifically, I would like to make a distinction between epistemological determinism and determinism proper. Bountiful scientific evidence has been supplied against the former, while there is good reason to believe that no evidence can be supplied before or against the latter. If our world is epistemologically deterministic, it means that if we know everything there is to know about the universe at an initial time, we can calculate everything that there is to know about the universe at a later time. Determinism in the epistemological sense, then, has to do with our abilities to know the future.

Determinism proper, by contrast, means that given a state of the universe an initial time, there is only one possible state of affairs at a later time. This is best illustrated by an example. Suppose that we used the Cosmic Remote to rewind the universe to the earliest stages of the big bang. We then hit the play button. If the universe turns out exactly the same as it is today, from the organization of galaxies to atoms, then our world is deterministic. If it turns out to be different in the slightest, then our world is not deterministic.

It is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle that provides strong evidence that we do not live in an epistemologically deterministic world—there are inherent physical limits as to how accurately we can predict the future. It used to be believed that if one could assess the momentum and position of every particle in the universe accurately enough then it would be theoretically possible, though consummately impractical, to predict the momentum and position of particles in the universe at future states. Since Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle places a fundamental limit on the accuracy with which we can determine the momentum and position of a particle. The more accurately we know the momentum of a particle, the less accurate it is possible to measure the position of a particle. Similarly, the more accurately we know the position of a particle, the less accurately it is possible to measure the position of a particle. Since you cannot measure momentum and position of present particles to an arbitrary degree of accuracy, you cannot calculate the momentum and position of future particles to an arbitrary degree of accuracy.

This is not, however, the whole story. Even after supplying strong evidence against epistemological determinism, it is entirely possible that the universe could be deterministic, comprised of an unbroken chain of cause and effect. The problem is that if this is the case, due to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, we can never know it. There may be some unseen mechanism underlying the probabilistic science of quantum mechanics, but it is by its nature unobservable. I will explain why this is so by taking you through the astounding and paradoxical double slit experiment. This will be a bit of an aside, but you may find it interesting, and it will explain why science as it currently stands suggests that we cannot know.

There came a point in the 1800’s when physicists began to believe that they were finally beginning to fill in the holes in their picture of the universe. All that was left was to determine the nature of that most mysterious of phenomena—light. Scientists conducted a series of experiments to find out whether light was a wave or a particle. The most important of these was the double slit experiment by Thomas Young in 1803. It works as follows. A concentrated beam of light is aimed at a thin vertical slit in an opaque sheet. On the other side of the sheet from the source of light is a photosensitive screen on which you can see the pattern the light makes as it “scatters” through the slit. This pattern is known as the “interference pattern.”
When beaming the light at the slit, the light spread out slightly. What showed up on the photo screen afterwards was not simply a shadow of light behind the slit—it was more spread out. As interesting as this is, it’s trivial compared to the result that happens in the following variation: what happens if you aim the beam of light at two narrow slits very close together? What happens is counter intuitive. Instead of seeing two narrow slits of light on the photo sensitive screen, you see alternating bands of light and dark!

You can see what the bands look like from the picture above. The circles take some explanation, as they are the reason light is said to have a “wave nature” as well as a “particle nature”. The circles are simply how one would determine ahead of time the density of light at a various regions of the photosensitive sheet. You simply visualize light as waves radiating outward from the slits as if from two rocks dropped next to each other in a pool of water. Depending on the way these “waves” cross one another, they are said to be interfering (interacting) in a “constructive” manner, a “destructive” manner, or somewhere in between. Interference that is more constructive in nature corresponds to a lighter patch on the photo screen, and interference that is more destructive in nature corresponds to a dimmer patch on the photo screen. I realize that this is far from clear, but hopefully another picture I bummed off of Google will help demonstrate the point:

The point is that light appears to interact in a wave like way in the same way that matter seems to interact in a particle light way. Thus, for several decades, scientists believed that light had an exclusively wave like nature and matter had an exclusively particle like nature. This assumption was destroyed by new discoveries that were made in the 20th century. First of all, Planck discovered that light was actually emitted in discrete particles or “quanta” called photons. Secondly, it is not known that the experiment described above works for electrons as well as photons, suggesting that both photons and electrons have both a particle nature and a wave nature.
As mentioned above, the interference patterns on the screen seem to be due to particles passing through the slits interacting with each other in some way. This raises the question of what would happen if one were to use a device that emitted only one particle at a time (in the case electrons), supposedly depriving the particles of a chance to interact with other particles. Because of this, one would expect electrons to simply build up behind the two slits like an inverse shadow. Thus began an experiment with historically bizarre results. An electron beam was aimed at two slits, and electrons were fired one at a time. The following picture shows the buildup of electrons over time on the photo screen.

The exact same thing happens as did when electrons were emitted simultaneously. Even though the single electron has nothing to interact with, there is still an interference pattern. It appears as if the electron somehow interacts with itself by going through both slits at once! Astonishing. Excited scientific folk immediately set to work to detect if this was the case. If the electron really passed through both slits at once, then it should be possible to detect it doing just that. In order to detect whether the particle passed through one slit, or the other, or both, the experimenters set up detectors at both slits that would go off if an electron passed through that slit.

Something happened that the physicists weren’t counting on. The mere presence of the detectors changed the system so that the interference patterns disappeared, and instead there were the inverse shadows of electrons building up directly behind the two slits. Only one detector went off at a time, depending on which slit the electron passed through. Since the circumstances of the experiment were unexpectedly and radically changed, the original question of which slit the electron passed through remained unanswered. People debate to this day about whether or not there is even a fact of the matter of where the electron is before it hits the photo screen. The question is really one for philosophers now—scientists cannot detect where the electron is beforehand without radically changing the results of the experiment.

This concludes the admittedly lengthy portion of this essay about the experimental results, and I am now in a better position to use these results in order to explain why there is currently no evidence for determinism. The first thing that you will notice is that while one can visualize particles as waves interfering with each other in order to determine the interference pattern, there is no method to determine where an individual particle will hit the screen. Instead, all that can be given is the probability that the particle will hit a certain point on the photo screen.

The first thing that comes to mind upon hearing this is that this probabilistic nature of quantum mechanical predictions must reflect limits on what we can know, rather than an element of nature being fundamentally probabilistic. The problem with this view is that there is simply no evidence to suggest that there is some underlying mechanism that determines ahead of time where the particle hits the screen. In fact, a more recent (1970’s) experiment (that I do not understand nearly as well as the slit experiments suggests that) resulted in a ground-breaking discovery known as Bell’s theorem, which states “No physical theory of hidden variables can ever reproduce all of the predictions of Quantum mechanics.”

Basically, this means that there are no subatomic causal mechanisms that are determining ahead of time where the electron will hit the screen. Assuming the truth of Bell’s theorem, the only way to formulate a physically consistent deterministic theory is to allow nonlocal variables and causality at a distance. Some experiments do result in objects that are separated by great distances but are nevertheless “synchronized” in a way, a phenomena known as entanglement. It the crazy quantum world, non-local causality is a possibility. But as of yet, there is simply no evidence for it at all.

So, while it is still logically possible that our world is deterministic, that the state of the universe at one moment exact ally determines future states, there is no more solid evidence for it than the hypothesis that there are pink sub-atomic rabbits pushing the electrons to their final destination (I love using that example). There are several interpretations of quantum mechanics, some of which are deterministic, such as the Bohme interpretation and Everett’s many worlds interpretation, the first of which involves non-local causality, and the second of which involves an infinite (and growing) number of causally isolated universes constantly branching off from one another. As of yet, no methods have been devised for determining which interpretation is correct, although the Copenhagen interpretation is currently the most common (this is the one that says that there is not fact of the matter of a particles exact position or momentum before it is measured). There is good reason to believe that even a unified theory of physics would be ambiguous with respect to determinism.

Another objection that could be raised to my arguments is the possibility that macroscopic events are practically certain, since quantum effects happen at scales too small to translate into a probabilistic reality. The problem with this objection is that while the macroscopic world isn’t usually subject to quantum uncertainty, it certainly can be under certain circumstances. For example, say that I set up a single slit experiment, and drew a line direct ally down the center of the photo screen. I plan to fire a single particle, and tell myself that if the particle hits to the left of the line then I’ll eat dinner at Moulten and that if the particle hits to the right of the line then I’ll eat dinner at Thorne. If quantum mechanical phenomena really are inherently probabilistic, then I have just made a perfectly random macroscopic decision.

Lastly, it should be mentioned that even if does turn out to be true (although we now have no way of knowing) that our world in inherently probabilistic, it is still possible to accept determinism in a sense, only with a modified definition. Even if events do not strictly determine each other, it appears that at least probabilities directly determine each other. Given the probability distribution of a particle’s position at an initial time, I can compute exactly the probability distribution of the particle’s position at a later time

Early Entries

I've decided to post what I hope to be some of the more thoughtful entries in my “philosophy” journal. These essays are not always about philosophy in the strictest sense, but frequenty cross the line into existential musings about life, the universe, and everything (you knew I had to quote Hitch-hikers sooner or later). Many of these essays are rather personal, but I post them in hope that the manner in which I have struggled with some spiritual issues may be of help to others.

Because the pesky format of this blogging site necessitates that I enter in a time for each of these early enteries for which I don't recall the time during which I wrote them, I have decided to simply put 12:00 PM for every entry.

Older Writings

I've decided to post what I hope to be some of the more thoughtful entries in my “philosophy” journal. These essays are not always about philosophy in the strictest sense, but frequenty cross the line into existential musings about life, the universe, and everything (you knew I had to quote Hitch-hikers sooner or later). Many of these essays are rather personal, but I post them in hope that the manner in which I have struggled with some spiritual issues may be of help to others.

Because this pesky site necessitates that I enter in a time for all of the old writting pieces for which I do not remember the time it was durring which thoughts were first set to keyboard, I have decided to simply put 12:00 PM for every article prior to the first post in January.

When reading through my writings here, one must realize that my opinions are in a state of constant flux. This is partly due to the fact that I am in college, and am being exposed to new ideas constantly, and partly because of the fact that I am very reluctant to jump to conclusions about things, unless circumstances necessitate it.

Dreams of France

I had the most peculiar dream last night. I suddenly realized that I was resolutely hell-bent on doing graduate level philosophical study in France. This new passion of mine perplexed me, as it likely would mean studying in the continental rather than analytic tradition. I was also very worried about whether I would be able to learn French in time. I am already double majoring, so I have precious little time to take multiple French courses before I graduate. This strangest of dreams has a metaphor--never read a Wikipedia article about Michel Foucault before you go to bed.

First post

In the last 15 minutes or so, I've decided to start a blog. In my experience, many of the most delightful experiences result from a sort of prudent spontaneity, so I think this not a bad way to begin a blog. Truth be told, I've had the idea of starting a blog rolling around in my mind for some time now. I have more than a hundred pages of philosophical, spiritual, and personal insights (note that there is of course overlap between the three aforementioned categories), almost none of which have been read. So, I begin this blog in hopes that some of my ideas can be read by and discussed with others, and that the fact that my blog is public will encourage me to edit my writings to a greater degree than I currently do, which is very little.

Before I commence with the more philosophically substantial posts, I would like to share a bit about myself. As it says in the "About me" rectangle to the right, I am a philosophy student at Bowdoin College. I am currently intending to go into graduate school to become a professional philosopher. My interest in philosophy grew out of an interest in religion--my interest in Christian theology lead me indirectly to Descartes, and from then on to other philosophers, such as Sartre, Wittgenstein. My interest in religions has continued, and I currently hold a particular fascination with Buddhism, although other religions continue to draw my interest.

I also have a strong interest in mathematics. My strongest interests in the strange and often baffling world of mathematics is in those areas where philosophy and mathematics collide, namely formal logics and its application to foundational studies and mathematical logic. I also have an interest in computer theory, cellular automata, Turing machines, and related areas. Although I take great care not to pull a Hawking and attempt to apply abstract mathematical principle's to philosophy of science (*cough* using Godel's incompleteness theorem to "prove" the impossibility of a unified theory of physics *\cough*), I do occasionally employ mathematical concepts as philosophical metaphors.

Lastly, I appreciate humor. So if I appear deadly serious about certain matters, it is almost certainly the case that I am not being deadly serious, unless, of course, I am.