Purpose and Meaning

Philosopher Julian Baggini reckons he knows the Meaning of Life (article) and What It's All About (book).

The only sense we can make of the idea that life has meaning is that there are some reasons to live rather than to die, and those reasons are to be found in the living of life itself.

Baggini is apparently equating meaning with purpose.

Aristotle distinguished between efficient cause (what a system does) and final cause (what a system is for). Weak POSIWID asserts that we can infer the final cause (purpose) from the efficient cause. Strong POSIWID asserts that the final cause is identical to the efficient cause - in other words, that's all that purposes are.

Teleological thinking asserts that we can explain the efficient cause (and Aristotle's other two causes as well - formal cause and material cause) in terms of the final cause (purpose). For teleological thinking to make sense, we either have to imagine the system to be self-creating (autopoietic) or imagine another external designing system that owns the purpose.

In general systems thinking, we can usually frame any system of interest inside one or more larger systems, relative to some observer position. But considerable difficulties emerge when we try to apply systems thinking to Life, The Universe and Everything. What kind of system is the entire universe - open, closed, autopoietic, designed? And where (on Earth) can we stand to get a meaningful answer?

Technorati Tags: 4cause Aristotle autopoiesis meaning POSIWID purpose systems thinking

Mistaken Identity

A heckler was ejected from the Labour Party conference today. Mr Walter Wolfgang (aged 82) was thrown out of the conference by Labour Party heavies, after shouting at the Foreign Secretary. 

According to the BBC News, "police used powers under the Terrorism Act to prevent Mr Wolfgang's re-entry". Many critics had always feared that the Terrorism Act would be used for other purposes besides terrorism. Here we see the Act apparently being used to suppress heckling. If there was a covert purpose to the legislation, surely it has been exposed by this action?

[updated to add] Robin Wilton writes: "Whatever the intent of the Act, a shameful episode like this reveals the danger of framing legislation in ways which make such abuses possible." 

Or was it a case of mistaken identity? Perhaps the police thought they were dealing with Mr Walter Wolfgang Droege, whose name appears on various international databases. Yes that must be it.

 

Related post: Delayed Reaction (August 2006)

Purpose and Probability

A few recent examples have set me thinking. There is an interesting relationship between the purpose (effect) of the individual and the purpose (effect) of the system.

	The US Army in Afghanistan and Iraq use 300,000 bullets to kill each insurgent. [source: Independent on Sunday] Assuming the purpose of the ammunition is to support US military objectives, only a very tiny proportion of the bullets will actually achieve this purpose.
	Richard Dawkins criticizes Gerin Oil (by which he means religion) because of its effects on a tiny proportion of users.
	And of course in biology there are many examples of similar phenomena. A large number (of seeds, sperm, mutations, whatever) is produced, of which only a tiny proportion fulfil their "purpose".

These examples show the importance of looking at the whole system. We cannot infer a strong purpose for an individual based on a very low probability effect. But the aggregate effect of the whole population may have a reasonably high probability.

We also tend to look at these examples with teleological expectations - in other words, we expect to find purpose. In the case of the US military, it is hardly controversial to suppose that there are some human intentions involved, although it's certainly possible to imagine some stakeholders having a commercial or political agenda as well as (or even instead of) a military agenda.

But these examples are all open to different interpretations. POSIWID gives us useful clues about purpose, but these clues are ambiguous and sometimes controversial.


Technorati Tag: POSIWID

Unambiguous Threat

We are asked to believe that the mass media (including television and internet) are inherently progressive, and support democracy everywhere. In September 1993, Rupert Murdoch claimed that satellite TV was "an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere". China immediately banned private satellite dishes. 

Murdoch then embarked on a long process of placating, reassuring and (as many websites describe it) courting the Chinese authorities. But according to the BBC (19th September 2005), he remains disappointed with the results of this process.

Actually, unambiguous threats are a bit unfashionable, even in military circles. In 2000, one of Clinton's military advisors, US Admiral William A. Owens, said that ambiguous threats posed a greater challenge than unambiguous ones. (Revolutionizing Warfare, Blueprint Magazine 2000)

Like us, our allies face an ambiguous world. The need to cut through ambiguity, especially at operational and tactical levels, has replaced the need to offset the prowess of a superior adversary posing an unambiguous threat. Sharing dominant battle-space knowledge - the key to modern deterrence - will reassure our friends and allies.

It now seems that some media giants are happy to share "battle-space knowledge" with the Chinese authorities. For example, Yahoo passed the identity of a journalist to the Chinese. (Murdoch criticized this decision.) And Microsoft is willing to enforce the Chinese vocabulary blacklist (which includes the word "democracy"). So much for Thomas Friedman, who argued in his 1999 book The Lexus and the Olive Tree that two great democratizing forces—global communications and global finance—would sweep away any regime which is not open, transparent and democratic.  

Sources: Bloomberg, Guardian, Andrew Leonard, George Monbiot. 

Surveillance 2

On his way home from Salford University, Robin Wilton has the good fortune to pass Strangeways Prison, and is prompted to blog about the panopticon.

POSIWID teaches us to look at the effects of a system rather than its avowed purpose. I have just re-read a post by Scribe (The two faces of CCTV) [URL updated] in which he discusses and dismisses several avowed (and contradictory) purposes of CCTV. Among other things, surveillance is supposed to teach good behaviour to those being watched. In reality, surveillance often merely teaches more devious or secretive behaviour.

Most of the discussion of panopticon revolves around the people under surveillance. But we should also consider the corrupting effect of panopticon on those doing the watching. See my previous posts Guarding the Guardians and Surveillance and its Effects.

In March/April 2005, there was a lengthy debate between Stefan Brandt (from Credentica and McGill) and SuperPat (Pat Patterson of Sun Microsystems) as to whether the Liberty Alliance counted as panoptical. There is a useful index to the debate by Kim Cameron (Microsoft). But this debate revolved largely around the technical features of the Liberty Alliance architecture, and on the hierarchical/network trust relationships. I don't deny that these details are important and interesting, but I don't think they have anything to do with the panopticon.

The panopticon was designed to produce certain effects - certain changes in behaviour in the actors. In my view, this is what is most important in deciding whether to regard something as a metaphorical implementation of the panopticon. I haven't seen any contribution to the Liberty/panopticon debate that identified any such effects.

Gas Bezzle

Gasoline prices in the USA are going up. (Note to American readers: UK prices are close to one pound sterling PER LITRE, so please stop complaining.) Parts of the USA are experiencing serious shortages of locking gas caps (PhillyBurbs via Bruce Schneier)

I think this calls for some ecological analysis.

• Who is selling the locking gas caps? Who is buying up all the locking gas caps - honest motorists or the siphoning gangs?
  
• Who is buying the siphons? Who is selling the siphons? What is the effect on other activities that use siphons?
  
• What is the relationship between the supply/demand of locking gas caps and the supply/demand of siphons?

Many years ago, JK Galbraith introduced the notion of bezzle, as the quantity of money fraudulently siphoned from the economic system, and described the system dynamics of bezzle in relation to the economic environment. [NotionWiki: Bezzle] We now have a version of this phenomenon where the siphon is no longer metaphorical but literal.

Baghdad Stampede

It is easy to trace the cause of yesterday's tragedy in Baghdad, in which nearly a thousand people lost their lives (BBC news report). The much-overused word tragedy is appropriate here, because of the terrible way in which the crowd's response to a rumour amplified its effect.

The effect of terrorism is to create a climate in which people are easily terrified. (From resistance and stoicism to susceptibility and panic.) In a climate of fear, a rumoured attack can be as devastating as a real attack.

There had been a mortar attack earlier in the day, but the stampede was not just the aftershock from this single incident. The fear was not the result of a single act of terror, but of a series of attacks over an extended period. It is this aggregation (and the uncertain probability of repetition) that turns terror into terrorism. 

Systems thinking should remind us that we can frame a complex tragedy in many different ways. What causes and effects do we include in the frame, how far back into history do we take the analysis? Systems thinking explains why there are so many conflicting explanations and excuses - because there are so many different frames. And why there are so many competing solutions for resisting and battling terrorism. Meanwhile, the appalling terror continues. 

My deepest sympathies to the victims of the stampede, and to the people of Iraq. 

Previous post: Does Terrorism Work? (July 2005)