The Past Few Months

Although the body can be trained into a plethora of habits, there are some that don't ever seem to become natural. For the past three months, I have been working nights in a temporary job trying to bridge the gap between my life as an academic and my long awaited new career. I am now rather accustomed to being awake at night and sleeping most of the day, but besides being down right awkward for dealing with the rest of the world (such as insurance companies when my car was struck and totaled on my way to work), the body never quite looses its instinct to enter shut down mode when it is dark. However, since I am usually up when it is dark, and am not sleep deprived, I only feel tired but generally couldn't sleep if I wanted to.

I had hoped to write more blog posts during by nights off, but my wife picked up some audio books for me to listen to. During the Advent and Christmas seasons, the retail world was so busy that I had to use all of my nights off to work through the audio books before they were due back at the library. Now that business has tapered off, I have just kept up the audio book program, and work my way through them more quickly. My first project is to work though Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander series.

Many of you may remember the movie that was based off of this series and was titled after the seventh or eighth book in the series. Before reading the books, I had thought that more movies might be made to continue the series, but upon listening to the first three and a half books (45 CDs or so), I have already encountered most of the pericopes present in the movie. While I can see that this is useful for developing the main characters (Jack Aubrey and Steven Maturin), it does rather preclude the option of making any of the earlier books into movies.

The Uphill Job Battle

So, yesterday I continued that seemingly unending project of getting hired. I was called to the downtown HQ to begin my extensive background check, and found that to my amazement, someone finally had looked at my file before talking to me, but that this did have some downsides.

Instead of the usual look of who are you, I was greeted with an expression that said that I had already been analyzed by the personality profilers and had been stereotyped as a nerd/intelectual, and thus I would be impractical and unable to handle challenges or stressful situations, especially those that involved some sort of physical threat. I suppose that I reinforced that first impression by dressing decently rather than however she expected me to be dressed.

In the end, however, after checking my references, I seemed to receive the stamp of approval from my background investigator.

More on the Beginning of Life

With the debate on when the soul is joined to the body and thus when human life begins, I thought it might be useful to reflect momentarily upon what is going on shortly after conception.

As the new life begins, the fertilized egg strengthens its membrane to inhibit a secondary fertilization. It also begins the process of forming new cells. Neither the mother nor the father is in direct contact with this new life at this time. Their offspring is under its own direction as the body begins to take shape. For the first few days, all the mother’s body does for the new child is direct it toward its eventual site of implantation. The newly formed DNA of the child directs some elements of its formation; however, the DNA cannot solely be the motive principle of the new life. The DNA will not change throughout the life of the child (except when it is inaccurately copied by a cell). Moreover, the DNA is acted upon by the cell, rather than acting upon the cell. The DNA is copied in toto when the cell divides into two new cells, and the DNA is copied in part when certain parts, RNA, are needed for various cellular functions. It is the master plan for the functioning of the cell, but like an architect’s blueprint which does not cause the house to be built, the DNA does not by itself cause a cell to be, live, or function. Something else must direct the life of the cell and of the whole creature.

Moreover, DNA or any other feature of a single cell is unable to account for voluntary action, or the intellectual grasp of universals. The brain certainly has some function in mental activities, including sensation, sensible memory, and imagination.

Materialists

In a certain sense, it is surprising that the modern materialist philosopher does eventually advert to some notion of the soul rather than just giving up on the question. He thinks of the soul as part of the ancient mysticism that we enlightened moderns have been liberated from. However, the strict materialists that every high school chemistry class in the country is turning out (with their strict and antiquated Bohr models of atomic and subatomic structures) is left with nothing to advert to when it comes to explaining life. The scientist, unguided by philosophy that is truly grounded in nature, seeks to create life by mixing together a vat of amino acids and electricity in an acidic atmosphere to create a single protein, which incidentally is not life. In order to explain the leap of faith that the scientist is making in holding that this extremely improbable action would happen in nature, the scientist is required to hold that the world has already existed for an extremely long period of time, if not eternally. Additionally, the scientist is required that over enough time, every possible combination of events will occur. However, again this is quite a leap of faith. Not everything that is imaginable in our picture thinking imaginations is something that is potentially possible. I can imagine that I could sprout wings and fly, and thus you could say that it is possible, but I have no real potency to do such.

The possible is the rationalist’s replacement for the Aristotelian distinction of act and potency, which helps to ground both philosophy and science in the real. The potential is based upon what something could actually do or be but currently is not, while the possible is based upon what is conceivable in the mind but currently is not. Equating the possible and the potential is little more than sloppy philosophy and egoism.

The Abortion Debate

Since I mentioned abortion in "Political Myopathy," I thought that it would be worthwhile to undertake a more thorough investigation of the various opinions on the subject. There is a vast array of opinions about whether and when abortion should be legal. We will begin with the most radical pro-abortion view and work our way back.

1. Since birth is primarily an accidental change, and children do not have full and active use of the faculty of reason until around age 7, any child up to this age may be aborted.

2. Since birth is primarily an accidental change, and children do not even recognize reason in another, let alone actively use reason, abortion ought to be allowed up until children are able to recognize and follow reason in another.

3. Abortion should be allowed up until the child is born, at which time he becomes a person and a citizen of his country, and thus entitled to life.

4. Abortion ought to be permitted up until the age of viability, at which time it is only accidental that the child is in the womb.

5. Abortion ought to be permitted up until the age of quickening, at which time the child exhibits explicit and quantifiable signs of animal life.

6. Abortion should not be permitted at any point, since the child is a distinct human person from the moment of conception.

Although the first two positions are only rarely proposed, since the laws of every country that I know of rightly consider this to be murder, they seem to be fairly logical extensions of the pro-abortion stance. They are based upon something that is more intrinsic to man than birth.

Still, the use of reason is still potentially present in the individual from the moment the human soul is joined to the new matter. However, until the matter is sufficiently developed, the individual is unable exercise reason. A notion and understanding of the role of soul seems to be the underlying problem in this whole debate. Although the ancients noted that something beyond matter is necessary to explain life. A purely material and physical understanding of the universe is unable to distinguish between or account for the difference between the living and the nonliving. If you were shown a picture of a person and were asked whether he was sleeping or dead, you would be unable to answer.

Now you say, this is still a bit superficial. What if you were able to examine the individual? You would check the individual's vital signs: heart beat, breathing, brain waves, etc. These days, the medical field defines death as the absence of brain waves, but as I mentioned in my post "The meaning of Death" on 23 May 2008, at least two individuals have spontaneously regained "living" after having previously ceased brain function. So called vital signs are signs that generally accompany life, but are insufficient for accounting for or causing life.

We should all just read Aristotle's De Anima.

The ancients still had a hard time explaining what was in utero, especially when in the early stages of gestation, but they all agree that it is at least potentially a fully functioning human person. We now know through ultrasound imaging and surgical procedures that the child moves about under its own power much earlier than previously thought. The ancients could only rely upon the sensation of the mother, but we can "look" into the uterus. The child is also distinct from the mother from its first moments. It has distinct DNA, and its cells are functioning under their own direction to develop the child's body.

This is a tough issue, and unfortunately many on both sides are driven by emotion rather than reason. The discussion also strays into rather accidental matters such as the difficulty in raising a child. No doubt raising children is difficult, but if one is not in such a state as to accept the natural consequences of ones actions, adoption can always be arranged. The real question is whether the child is a human person from the moment of conception, not whether the parents are inconvenienced or the mother's health is put at risk. Risks are not certainties, and what mother or father would not want to give his life for his children after they are born? Does not the motherly or fatherly instinct direct the parents to risk their own harm to protect their children?

Progress on the Job Hunt

Beginning a career seems to be a bit more involved than I had hoped. I have been applying for jobs in my chosen field since May of this year, and unfortunately do not have much to show for it as of yet. The application that is the furthest along is one of the last added to the application pool. The first couple of applications to process went down in flames of glory as I began to learn the hiring game that I was taking part in. In a lot of ways getting hired is a lot like doing well in school. It not only takes suitable study and natural aptitude, but also knowing what your teachers are looking for. Thus, to get hired, you have to get a feel for those who are hiring you, and be able to articulate what they are looking for better than they are able to. Thus, my first two applications failed as I worked to figure out what was going on, my third ended when I discovered that the department was not one that I wanted to work for, and the last four applications are still pending.

It also helps when you are applying to a bigger department. If only a few people are being hired out of a big applicant pool, the department is more concerned with finding any excuse to disqualify someone rather than with finding the best applicants. However, if may are being hired, then to some extent the department is forced to take a more serious look at the applicants at each stage to determine the strongest ones.

I suppose that this is all theory for now. We shall see what I think when I am on the other side, but that will have to wait for a while.

I also have to fight the prejudices of those who are interviewing me. My background is unusual but not unheard of for this career. I heard about one at least partially similar case when I was finishing my M.A. in Florida. An officer with the Ft. Myers PD also had a Masters Degree in theology. So, this has been done before, but it is a bit of a hard sell.

Apology

I must apologize for the extended silence of this blog. I do not have continual internet access as I did when I began the blog. Nevertheless, I do have regular access to the internet, but generally without adequate time to write blogs. In the future I will try to write throughout the week and post a week worth of blogs over the weekend. You will notice the blogs appearing all at once, but I will date them as they are written.

If anyone still bothers to look at this blog, your persistence and patience will pay off shortly.