That’s a bunch of Bull.. or avante ammommede…
The blogger in me was dormant for the past few weeks as I have been quite busy with my life and was totally engrossed in some games that I really wanted to finish playing during my free time. As far as I am concerned, my blog is a medium to express my opinion and share it to the world at large and the urge for me to blog comes when I feel the need to express my opinion about stuff I encounter daily, if I have time for it that is.
My friend shared an article about World Philosophy Day hosted in BBC magazine site and written by one Mr David Baine who is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Glasgow. I had absolutely no qualms with the beginning paragraphs of the article where the author is telling what the world expects of philosophers and what they really are and all. However, as the intro came to an end, the author came up with 4 “pesky arguments to apply your minds to”. I read through all the four questions and their arguments and my reaction is “avante ammommede $%@%”. The questions and the so called philosophical arguments given bellow each are nothing but absolute nonsense. I like philosophy even though I’m an engineer and I like listening to debates, sometimes even taking part in friendly ones, although after a few arguments I come up with nonsensical arguments that irritate the opposing party and the entire debate turns to an abuse fest. When I started reading the article I was genuinely interested and as I finished it left me terrifically irritated. Here are my reasons
1. SHOULD WE KILL HEALTHY PEOPLE FOR THEIR ORGANS?
First of all the subject itself is pure idiocy and the arguments that the idiot comes up to painstakingly try and create an atmosphere of argument is pathetic. Everyone in the world would say no to the question above. Oh but wait, the philosophy expert has some clever scenarios that are VERY similar to the case above or so he thinks. He talks about a kidnapping scenario and a people tied to the tracks scenario. First of all what idiot kidnapper would give a loaded gun to the person he kidnapped? To the guy in the tram I would say “Does the word brakes mean anything to you?”. I stand corrected if the first scenario was out of any one of the Saw movies and in the second scenario, the author himself was in the tram. If that’s not the case the answer is obvious, you kill the one person and save the remaining five.
However, I fail to understand how these two scenarios are the same as killing a perfectly healthy person to save five other people when there is no influencing factor involved. The 6 characters are not even remotely connected, the six characters need to have the same blood group and the most important thought does a human body have that many organs, that can cause death, which can be replaced? I am not great in biology, heck, I sucked in biology except for the ninth standard class about reproduction, but even I know that the replaceable organs that unless replaced can kill a man are heart, kidney, lung and liver. The other organs that can be transplanted from dead donors are pancreas, intestine, penis, cornea etc and none of these transplants can save a dying man’s life. So when I applied my mind to the first pesky argument the reaction I had was “avante ammommede…”
2. ARE YOU THE SAME PERSON WHO STARTED READING THIS ARTICLE?
Like my very good friend, who has a nasal problem, I like chaos, relativity and stuff like that. Even when I was a kid I was always fascinated about my existence as an organism, how my brain works and all. I believe that what gives us our individuality is our brain and that what is stored inside it. Like I said before I am not good in biology but the sentences this philosopher dude writes pains me. Philosophy is interesting when the philosopher is intelligent and imaginative and it can be unadulterated irritation when idiots attempt philosophy because they could not get admission for a better course. The author is rambling incoherent stuff and his so called findings are inconclusive and illogical. He talks about wiping the brain of 2 people and loading it with recorded brain mappings and then he talks about relativity, matter etc. Person cannot be in the two different places he says. How the hell would two people become one if their brains are remapped with the same recorded info? Even the arnie flick the sixth day showed the scenario pretty decently.
3. IS THAT REALLY A COMPUTER SCREEN IN FRONT OF YOU?
This is the most idiotic of the four arguments. Had mastermind philosopher used the refraction and optical illusion argument to come to the conclusion that how we perceive stuff with our eyes may not be how they actually appear, I would have been amused. But the idiot connects that with existence of items and says that the computer screen that you are looking at does not exist because of the arguments. Saying that the green colour seen by me would not be the same as the green colour seen by Obama would have been a nice argument. Like stuff that looks green to me may look blue to someone else even though we both call it red. What the author uses as supporting argument for the statement that the computer screen is not in front of me is not at all supportive like a 36 DD size bra worn by a 32 A size woman.
4. DID YOU REALLY CHOOSE TO READ THIS ARTICLE?
I like this question the most as the sarcasm in it gave me a brief moment of happiness in the middle of the pain this article had caused to my brain. However, my happiness came to an abrupt end when I knew that the author did not mean it the way I perceived. The author elaborates on one Mr Fred, very similar to Joe the Plumber of Mr Mcain, who could have predicted before big bang that I would have read the damn article. Ok how does some dude knowing that I would read this shit today billions of years ago affect my ability to choose what I read? Some of the lines irritated me so much that I had this feeling that question 3 would come true very soon. I buy Skoar magazine for the free games that they give. There is an interesting piece in their letters section called “retard of the month”. The section showcases the most idiotic letter of the idiotic letters that the magazine receives. There is a small Japanese cartoon strip that shows a sweet looking girl smiling and the subtitle says “you are a fucking retard”. The author’s arguments reminded me of that picture.
There is a conclusion also and the first paragraph of the conclusion made me think that I had been wrong all the time and the author was trying to show how meaningful arguments are needed for the right conclusion to be arrived at. I realised that was not the case when I read the paragraph again.
It is people like these who give the general public the opinion that philosophy is nothing but bullshit arranged in an incoherent and disorderly fashion. My views about the article may be incorrect but the conclusion I have drawn is that indeed it has “Four philosophical questions to make your brain hurt”. The ironic fact is that the arguments that I relied on while arriving at this conclusion does not provide sane, rigorous, and illuminating accounts of central aspects of our existence: freewill, morality, justice, beauty, consciousness, knowledge, truth, meaning etc. I may be pardoned coz I bullshit you not I am not a philosopher. Not even close.
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