I don't know much about how the justice system works in other countries, but here in the United States one of the most frequently heard phrases is "facts and the law."
Those words were used a lot by commentators on the criminal trial of Donald Trump, which ended last Thursday with a 12 person jury deciding unanimously, as is required in criminal trials, that Trump was guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in order to disguise the fact that a $130,000 payment to a porn star was to keep her quiet just before the 2016 presidential election about a sexual affair with Trump that occurred four months after his wife, Melania gave birth to their son, Barron.
Prosecutors had to convince the jury that both the facts and the law merited a conviction, while the defense team tried to cast doubt on the facts presented by the prosecution. But here's an interesting thing: the defense couldn't argue that the law was wrong or doubtful, because the law is what it is, until it is changed.
There's something beautiful about this.
The justice system, when it works correctly (it has flaws, just as every social system does), is a marvelous way of resolving disputes in a reasonable, measured manner. Each side presents its case, the facts of the matter as they see them, before a judge or jury. Then the judge or jury decides the extent to which those facts are believable, and applies that assessment of the facts to the appropriate legal standard.
To my mind much of the beauty here is akin to why sporting events are so pleasurable to watch. Every sport, such as baseball, has rules. Those are the "law." Umpires or referees observe what players are doing, the "facts." Then they rule on how the facts apply to the law. For example, if a pitcher misses the strike zone four times, the batter being pitched to is entitled to a walk, putting them on first base.
While players and coaches may disagree with a decision, usually they don't, or the disagreement is mild. By contrast, what drives me and others crazy about politics is how Donald Trump, an extremely poor loser, has complained about the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden being rigged against him, even though there's no evidence, no facts, that this is true.
When it comes to religiosity, both the facts and the law typically are disputed. As I have noted many times on this blog, and will surely do so again many times in the future, there's a lack of demonstrable evidence that a supernatural realm even exists, much less that it has certain characteristics claimed by every religion -- all of which describe the supernatural in their own unique fashion.
So both facts and the law are a matter of debate in religiosity. There's no way to adjudicate claims and counter-claims -- Jesus is the Son of God sent to absolve our sins; no he isn't! -- in such an amorphous situation. This leaves religions in the realm of personal belief, not impersonal facts.
Complicating things even more, believers in the supernatural are unable to come up with a coherent explanation for how an immaterial entity, such as God, is able to interact or communicate with material entities, such as we humans. In my first book, I observed that this is akin to supposedly immaterial ghosts being able to show signs of their presence by turning on a light or knocking on a door.
As much as I'd like the supernatural to exist (reality would be a lot more interesting if it did), the laws of nature as they're currently understood by science fail to show any solid evidence, any facts, that this is the case. Thus both the facts and physical laws argue against believing in the innocence, so to speak, or religiosity.
Today I read this passage in neuroscientist Christof Koch's book, Then I am Myself the World: What Consciousness Is and How to Expand It. This is from a section on near-death experiences.
There are persistent reports in the popular media that patients who undergo near-death experiences have "flat-lined," with their electroencephalograms (EEGs) showing no significant electrical activity. A completely inert brain would indicate a brain in a deep coma, a brain that had lost its causal powers and that certainly wouldn't feel anything.
Therefore, according to this narrative, "conventional medicine" (voiced with dripping sarcasm) fails to explain their visions. Instead, we just have to accept that these patients have been granted a vision of the Afterlife.
I am extremely skeptical, as I've never seen a patient with a flat, isoelectric EEG soon thereafter wake up and claim to have been conscious. A key difficulty is aligning the clock time of the near-death experience with the EEG record, given the patient's confused recollections hours later, often under sedatives.
Remember what I called the neuroscientist's dictum, "No brain, never mind"? Neuroscience operates under the hypothesis that all thoughts, memories, percepts, and experiences are an uneluctable consequence of the natural extrinsic and intrinsic causal powers of the brain -- not supernatural ones.
Unless there is extraordinary compelling evidence to the contrary, I see no reason to abandon the principle that a silenced brain does not support consciousness.
Note that Koch called this a hypothesis. That's the openness of science. If compelling fresh facts come along that argue for overturning our current understanding of the laws of nature, then some of those laws may need to be modified.
That's how the justice system works also. It's fairly common to have a guilty verdict overturned when new evidence, such as a DNA test that wasn't available during the original trial, shows the innocence of someone who was convicted of a crime.
But simply saying so doesn't make it so. Not in the law, and not in religiosity. Facts matter. A lot.
And Trump worshipers are irrational half-wits, the same as the religious are --- when it comes to this specific, otherwise they may and often are functional, more or less --- so that they'll continue to claim, in the teeth of facts and reason, that their vile grotesque orange god can do no wrong and has been unfairly crucified. He's stiffed them by playing with hookers on their tab, and then lying shamelessly about it, but they'll line up to pour out their meager all to fill the war chest of this vile bloated creature.
God help America if this vile POS manages to get through this time.
(Too bad Biden turned out to be a vile POS himself, with the blood of literally tens of thousands on his hands. Too bad it is a contest between the vile and the unthinkably grotesquely vile. ...At least in one case there is the possibility of redemption. In the other case it's give up all hope about everything.)
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | June 01, 2024 at 09:28 PM
I’ve often wondered about the difference between consciousness and awareness. Christof Koch is quite clear and uses the words interchangedly. He talks about the neural basis for consciousness and contends that ‘consciousness is experience and that all living organisms have some degree of consciousness.’
Also, interestingly he argues that consciousness is ‘grounded in information-processing computations.’ When pondering the mind and what it is, I can only see the mind as being information – in-formation derived from past experiences. Perhaps when presented with whatever situation arises for us, then Koch’s idea about consciousness could well be linked in with the brain’s neural networking where it presents information that instigates action – whether physical or mental.
Just a thought, but how lovely it would be to include consciousness with being just another function of our biological natures.
Posted by: Ron E. | June 03, 2024 at 06:31 AM
We also have our current president sententiously declaring how wonderful the American justice system is, and how we much all deeply respect it. The same president who publically accused SCOTUS of expressly trying to harm women, and who made vague threats of payback. First U.S. president to do so.
The same president who clutched his pearls when his predecessor had boxes of paper. "How could that possibly happen? How anyone could be that irresponsible. And I thought, what data was in there that may compromise sources and methods? By that, I mean names of people who helped or et cetera. And it just, totally irresponsible."
Then we find out said pearl clutcher had boxes of classified stuff in his garage. Whoops.
How easily are some people taken in by obvious Banana Republic Lawfare. A whore shakes down a guy for a tryst that happened decades ago, and somehow they think 30 felonies are a just punishment. $500 million in damages for victimless crimes. A shining example of how well our justice system works. Gosh, just a coincidence he's running for president and likely to win. but we are patriots and scholars with a keen sense of fairness.
Posted by: sant64 | June 03, 2024 at 08:51 AM