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2011-07-21T17:56:00.034+01:00

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Taking a break

2011-05-02T10:19:00.007+01:00

I am taking a break from writing my Tentative Answers in order to free up time for other projects. However, I will continue posting emails from my archive every weekday on Electronic Philosopher. Keep the questions coming!

http://www.philosophypathways.com/questions/

Making sense of the world

2011-04-18T10:45:00.020+01:00

On Tues, Apr 12, 2011 at 13:25:43
Aurora asked this question:

Why is there a need for man to make sense of the world?

Aurora's question is about a topic that will be familiar to many. What is the meaning of life? What sense can be made of the world? Well, it's good that she didn't ask that question, because if she had I wouldn't have chosen it. We get that question frequently. Why should we know? Do people asking what the meaning of life is seriously expect an answer? Luckily that's not Aurora's question. What Aurora wants to know is why do human beings feel motivated, or impelled to ask that question? Why is there a need to 'make sense of the world'? That's not a question many ask. A philosopher's question.

I would like to know the answer to that too. More to the point, I would like to know what on earth the question is about. (I won't make anything of the fact that Aurora asked why man needs to make sense of the world — and woman doesn't?)

There's no puzzle about why we need to make sense of things. I mean, things in the world, situations or events or objects that we encounter. There are different kinds of 'making sense'. The detective tries to make sense of the scattered clues left at the scene of a crime, say, a murder, by reconstructing the sequence of events, analysing cause and effect. There's also the question of motivation: was the motivation revenge, or theft, or was it just a random senseless killing? Then there's the hastily scribbled note left on the table. What does it say? what do the words mean?

I've just given three contrasting examples of 'making sense', which we apply every day. We ask about causes and effects; we ask about intentions, motivations, purposes; and we ask about the sense of words. There's no puzzle about why we do this. Try getting getting through the day without once doing one of these things. It's a matter of sheer survival. This can be an everyday event: like reading the words on the bottle to make sure you're taking the right medicine, or judging whether an approaching car is slowing down because the driver has seen you step into the road. And even when our survival isn't threatened, we ask these questions out of natural curiosity — which itself has survival value.

Aurora could have asked why human beings are so curious about the world, curious beyond any reasonable need if survival were the only thing we cared about. Other species exhibit curiosity too, of course, but at least in their case evolution supplies a sufficient explanation. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it's not difficult to see why on the whole this trait is beneficial rather than harmful to kitty.

It was in this spirit that Plato and Aristotle both remarked that 'Philosophy begins with wonder.' Human beings are creatures that wonder, that ask questions which go beyond any obvious utility or purpose. We ask for the sake of asking. We just want to know. That's one of the wonderful things about being human.

But that's not Aurora's question. Her question isn't about why, out of insatiable curiosity, we try to make sense of everything we come across. It's about why we ask the familiar question, 'what does this mean?' about the world. The world as such. The whole thing. All that is (or 'all that is the case'). Being qua being. Life, the universe and everything.

I've remarked before that it would be intolerable if the world had a sense — in the sense of a meaning or purpose — and we finally got to know what it was; and it would be equally intolerable if we finally got to know, absolutely and for certain, that the world does not have any meaning or purpose. What I'm now saying is that neither alternative — that the world has a sense, or that that world does not have a sense — makes any sense to me at all.

I am talking about the absurd. A world where everything added up, and you could see exactly the point of everything would be an absurd world; equally absurd would be a world where you knew there was no prospect of adding things up. A world which made sense, or didn't make sense, would be absurd. But it's absurd even to ask this question. And that's the point. Yet we do, anyway!

Physics, or rather cosmology, makes a pretty brave attempt at making sense of the universe in the first of the three senses which I outlined above: figuring out the sequence of causes and effects. But of course that's only on the assumption that by 'the world' one means 'this universe', that is to say, the world as governed by the laws of physics. Cosmologists sometimes forget (one can hardly blame them) that these laws are, ultimately, contingent not necessary (an observation I made in my previous post). There could have been different universes, governed by different laws than the laws which govern this universe.

A case could therefore be made for saying that the world, the world as such, is bigger than the physical universe or cosmos, because maybe there are potentially lots of universes, just as there are lots of suns with orbiting planets in this universe. But I don't want my argument to turn on that debatable claim. Let's just talk about the universe.

The universe or cosmos is that which is, existence, which of course includes ourselves. Whenever we try to 'make sense' of something, in any of the three senses which I distinguished (cause and effect, intention/ purpose, semantic meaning) it is always in relation to a framework. You can ask whether the universe as a whole 'has a purpose', say, if you are prepared to hypothesize something outside the universe, such as God is conceived to be. But then the same question arises again. You can only put God or a creator outside the universe by, in effect, hypothesizing a larger universe which contains both the creator and 'his' creation. (This is a familiar point from debates over the various arguments for the existence of God, so I won't labour it.)

The idea of a framework, the distinction between questions within a framework and questions about a framework, is one which Rudolf Carnap discussed in his seminal article, 'Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology'. After Quine's attack on the analytic/ synthetic distinction less attention has been paid to Carnap's foundational work on this topic, but the fundamental point is still valid as a diagnosis of the error which we easily fall into, of confusing questions about a framework with questions within a framework.

When the framework is the universe or cosmos, and the question is about meaning, then the correct and proper conclusion to draw from Carnap's theory is that we imagine a question where there is no question. We to ask questions about the framework which can only be asked within the framework, such as the question, or questions, about the 'sense of the world'.

Why do we do this? Why are we impelled to commit this error, over and over again? That's a question which Kant asked. The whole of the Critique of Pure Reason is devoted to exploring, in different ways, the limits to questioning and how we are impelled to transgress those limits. So I guess it would be appropriate to let Kant have the last word:

Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.

The perplexity into which it thus falls is not due to any fault of its own. It begins with principles which it has no option save to employ in the course of experience, and which this experience at the same time abundantly justifies it in using. Rising with their aid (since it is determined to this also by its own nature) to ever higher, ever more remote, conditions, it soon becomes aware that in this way — the questions never ceasing — its work must always remain incomplete... by this procedure human reason precipitates itself into darkness and contradictions; and while it may indeed conjecture that these must be in some way due to concealed errors, it is not in a position to be able to detect them.

Immanuel Kant Critique of Pure Reason Preface to the First Edition (N.K. Smith tr.)

Kant's great book was one of the first volumes I picked up when I discovered my interest in philosophy — even though I knew I wouldn't understand most of it. You could do worse, Aurora, than read Kant's Introduction and Prefaces (to the 1st and 2nd editions). It will inspire you.

Presentism and the cosmos

2011-04-07T11:09:00.019+01:00

On Tues, Apr 5, 2011 at 16:28:56
Fred asked this question:

I've been thinking about presentism and the conditions of the cosmos. It is well known that when we look out into space we are looking backwards in time. If we look out far enough we will eventually see the big bang itself. Since this is true, even if I look out a fraction of a millimeter from my eye, what I am seeing is in the past. Even when I look at my body I am seeing it not as it is, but as it was. Thus everything that I perceive is not as it is, but as it was. If presentism is true, it seems everything I perceive does not exist. Really, only my mind exists and I am a solipsist. Is this argument sound?

I take it that the argument in question is that presentism entails solipsism. The argument, as you state it, is unsound. I will explain why. However, there is a link between a particular way of interpreting what the presentist means which connects with a particular way of interpreting what the solipsist means. And this is something I see as valuable and important. I will return to that question later.

What is presentism? The first thing we need to do in evaluating this doctrine is to forget all we know about physics. In the actual world, the best evidence we have points to Einsteinian Relativity being the correct description. Relativity is also (as it happens) a more elegant and simple theory because it is based on the principle the laws of physics remain constant in all frames of reference. There is no 'ether flow', as the Michelson-Morley experiment demonstrated. So you can imagine that Relativity would be the theory God chose, if there was a God and He had the choice. That's what Einstein believed. But it is still only a theory which, if true, is true as a matter of empirical fact, not logical or metaphysical necessity.

The point of this preamble is that the presentist is perfectly entitled to say that there is at this present moment — the only time that is really real — something happening on a planet circling some star in the Andromeda galaxy. Maybe, a philosopher seated at a computer answering a question about the theory of presentism. What you see, when you gaze up at the night sky is the Andromeda galaxy as it existed 2.5 million years ago. The Andromedan philosopher is beyond all possible knowledge, so far as you and I are concerned. But that is consistent with the truth of, 'An Andromedan philosopher is thinking about presentism at this present moment.'

The statement I have just expressed makes perfect sense in a Newtonian universe. There is a case for saying that it does not make sense in an Einsteinian universe, where there is no absolute defnition of simutaneity. Two events 'happen' at the same time or at different times, depending on the frame of reference. All that means, however, is that the Einsteinian physicist has no use for such a definition. It is not required in order to express the laws of physics. However, as Richard Swinburne argues in his book Space and Time, that does not refute the belief in absolute time. (Swinburne is a theist: so you might suspect he has a special interest in putting the case for an absolute present which is God's awareness of the current state of the universe.)

I don't feel that I have sufficient knowledge of physics to wade into this debate. But it is not necessary to do so because, as I said, we are only concerned with evaluating the the argument that presentism entails solipsism. In order to demonstrate that the argument is invalid, it suffices to show that there is a possible world where presentism is true and solipsism false. The possible world in which Newtonian physics is true, is a counterexample to the argument. Admittedly, it is somewhat difficult to believe in presentism if you also believe in Relativity — because in Relativity there is no such time as the present — but as I have indicated the point is at least arguable.

Up to now, I have been talking about presentism as you describe it, what I would term 'naive presentism'. However, there is a deeper question whether there may be some way to express what the naive presentist means which does not attempt to encroach on territory occupied by contemporary physics.

Michael Dummett in his seminal article, 'The Reality of the Past' (1969), puts the case for what he terms an 'anti-realist' theory of meaning, which rejects the intuitively plausible idea that we can take the truth condition of a statement like, 'It's sunny today in Sheffield', and use it to account for the meaning of 'It was sunny at this location exactly 1000,000 years ago.' In the course of his argument, he makes the observation that to be an anti-realist with respect to the past involves taking the reality of time seriously. A realist about the past, by contrast, is more drawn to the eternalist view of time, according to which there is no pre-eminent time which we call now. Every time is a 'now'.

I share the intuition that it is a fact — a metaphysical fact, if you like — that the time is now. In terms of John McTaggart's distinction between the A-series (past, present, future) and the B-series (the series of events ordered by the 'before and after' relation), I would describe myself as an A-theorist. You don't have to be a presentist in order to be an A-theorist. One alternative would be C.D. Broad's view that the past is real while the future is unreal. Aristotle held a similar view. The past has happened, that's a fact, while the future is still open, it hasn't been 'made' yet. Some would regard this as just plain common sense.

I'm more drawn to Dummett's view. There's no recording angel. The ripples of events die down, until not a trace remains. There are no immutable 'facts'. I would go further and state that there are no truths, period, not even truths about 'what is happening now'. There are merely the things we believe, or say that we know and 'hold to be true'. No-one is keeping score except ourselves.

But who is 'we'? I can't speak for Fred, the author of the question, or for the anonymous reader of this post. Each of us has our own unique perspective, our own unique point of view. At the same time, we can and indeed must keep score of one another's beliefs and assertions. I can't do this just for myself. Wittgenstein's argument about private language and 'meaning is use' — the main inspiration for Dummett's argument — implies the incoherence of solipsism. There is no statement I can make about my experience concerning which I can claim incorrigible certainty. I am not the ultimate authority on whether or not I am 'following a rule' for the use of a word.

Yet, just as there is a fact that the time is now, and not some other time, so, I would argue, is it a fact that I am the person writing this post, not Fred, not the anonymous reader. This is what I argued for in my book Naive Metaphysics. I call it the (partial) vindication of solipsism. The I-now is an ultimate fact, but it is not the only fact, for, if it were, then all these words would be meaningless and there would be nothing to do but wag my finger. The conditions for the possibility of meaning must obtain, and they are a 'fact' too.

I won't deny that this is all deeply mysterious. I don't go in for mystery-mongering, but I recognize a contradiction when I see one. I also recognize when we have no choice but to believe that a contradiction (I call it a 'metaphysical contradiction') can be true. (Or, 'can hold' as I don't believe in 'truth'.) You're welcome to come back at me and say that, in saying what I've said, I've given up any right to evaluate the validity or soundness of arguments. But I would turn that around. My view of metaphysics is eclectic, maximally permissive. There are no 'true' metaphysical theories and there are no 'false' ones either. I believe in what I see, and I 'see a truth' in presentism, even while I accept that presentism is not true.

What is the point of living if we're going to die?

2011-03-28T10:46:00.036+01:00

On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 03:14:51
Bill asked this question:

Hey so my question is what the point of living if we are just going to die, normally the answer would be because we only have one chance to live, but if we are constantly changing doesn't that mean that we are constantly dying and are a new person every moment and doesn't that kind of nullify my first answer?

I agree with a lot in Bill's question, or at least with what it implies. I agree that 'we are constantly dying and are a new person every moment'. I'll give the argument in a minute. I also agree, or at least half agree, that there doesn't seem to be a 'point of living if we are just going to die'. Although I'm not sure things would be any better point-wise if we knew we were not going to die. At least, it's a moot question. I will talk about that too.

First, something to look up which I am not going to talk about. You can Google, Heidegger PLUS "possibility of impossibility", Levinas PLUS "impossibility of possibility". Much ink has been spilled on the so-called 'debate' between Heidegger and Levinas on the subject of death and our attitude to it. The one point of agreement between both philosophers is that human beings are necessarily finite beings. Finitude requires death. Even if you could live as long as the universe, the universe itself is doomed to die.

I am not so sure of this. 'How do you know?' would be my response. How do you know that you are a 'human being'? how do you know that you are just one of the transient aspects or parts that make up a transient universe?

What is certain is that more often than not, death involves suffering, decline, agony. None of us, or at any rate few of us, know how we are going to die, and that process of dying could itself be unspeakably awful. Nor has any human being yet been observed who was immune to death. It is very unlikely that you or I are exceptions to the general rule.

And yet, it takes only a moment's thought to realize that none of us really knows what will happen at, or after, 'death'. That after all is the point of Pascal's Wager. From a logical point of view, there is no experience (driving your car off a cliff, being tortured to death by the Inquisition, dying of lung cancer) which is such that it could not be followed by another experience (waking up in heaven, waking up in a pod in the Matrix, waking up in hell). If we define life, from the subjective standpoint as a sequence of connected experiences, then logically there is no point at which that sequence must end.

How then should we view things from the objective standpoint? To define an entity as 'finite' presupposes that we are able to measure its limits. Spatial finitude is easy enough to define. The desk on which I rest my hands is finite. If I stretch out, I can feel its width. But temporal finitude is more problematic, if we allow that one and the same entity could be reconstituted at some time in the future.

Again, take this desk as an example. Solid and well-made though my desk may be, in a hundred years from now its burned or smashed remains might be found in a land-fill site somewhere. In million years, there might be nothing left but the scattered molecules or atoms of which it was composed. But, logically, there remains the possibility that those parts could be somehow re-assembled. According to the best theory of identity over time for artefacts — such as spatio-temporal continuity under a suitable covering sortal concept (as per Wiggins) — we might well discount this as a case of identity. But things are not so clear when you consider the analogous thought experiment applied to a human being.

What makes a sequence of experiences mine? Here is a thought experiment which I first aired in my book Naive Metaphysics. The thought experiment has links with the well-discussed problem cases of 'fission' in the problem of personal identity, but has the advantage that we do not need to go into any of the technical details. You can do the fission, or the body duplication, or whatever you like to call it, any way you like.

I am interrupted while I am having breakfast by a ring at the door. On the doorstep is a man in a lab coat. He asks me 'how I'm doing'. 'Very well thank you, why did you want to know?' Then he tells me his story — an absurd, tall story of how yesterday I was incinerated in a car crash and then last night a perfect replica of me was placed in my bed. This morning, I woke up unaware that anything untoward had happened. You can fill in the details. The fatal road accident is reported on the TV news. I'm shown video footage of the cloning process. At some point I would be fully convinced that I am not GK, even though it seems subjectively to me that I am.

The subjective sense of 'being' some individual is what makes me different from my desk. My desk doesn't have a view about its own identity, whereas I do. But this subjective sense has no authority to override the patent objective facts. I died. Or, rather, GK is no more. That's the objective truth. I am not GK. Whether I am a clone assembled in a lab and programmed with GK's memories, or, more unlikely, materialized out of nowhere as a result of a giant cosmic accident, it makes absolutely no difference.

At this point, I'm inclined to say that I don't really care. I'm just glad to be alive. The legal stuff (such as how to fill in 'my' tax return) we can sort out. But, in any case, this still leaves a loophole for possible objective conditions, including objectively ascertainable facts about my psychological states, which would satisfy the best available theory for personal identity over time. If you could find a way to revive the dead, as in the Biblical story of the resurrection, that would be (with suitable tweaks) a way to preserve identity and make me the 'real' GK, rather than a mere copy or clone.

But now comes the crunch question: What matters for survival? Last week, I marked an essay by one of my University of London students on the question, 'Is a person's survival different from, and more important than, a person's continuing identity?' The idea that 'survival' rather than 'identity' is what really matters is a view which seems to be gaining increasing support (e.g. from philosophers such as Derek Parfit).

But what is survival without identity? My daughters will survive me, potentially to continue the sequence of generations. That's one way in which I can see an aspect of myself as 'continuing' after my death into the indefinite future. Or, imagine I am a crewmember of K19: The Widowmaker, and I have a twin brother in the same crew, a nuclear technician like myself. My brother and I are very close, we share everything, know everything about one another, even share girlfriends. Then the time comes for one of us to go into the reactor chamber to repair the radiation leak. According to Parfit it shouldn't matter to me in the least if I, or my twin brother goes to face certain death. Because what 'matters', what 'survives' will be exactly the same in both cases. The only difference, is the sheer difference in identity. I am I, and he is he. Yet surely, if I volunteer that would be an act of courage, of unforced altruism or fraternal love, to give my life up so that my twin can live.

If identity doesn't matter, then nothing matters or anything matters: take your pick. Define 'survival' as the fancy takes you, it doesn't alter the facts. Anyone is free to make his or her own decision about what to 'care' about.

On the other hand, if survival implies identity then, logically, I can see only two alternatives. Either, I do not 'survive' from one moment to the next, ever, or else nothing would count as my failing to survive. If we are prepared to make the jump and assert that something, an entity with an identity, survives over time, then whether you look at the matter subjectively in terms of continuity of experience or objectively in terms of the logically necessary and sufficient conditions for identity, you will not encounter death, but only a more or less temporary cessation of life which can never be finally extinguished.

Recalling Pascal again, to me this is an object potentially of far greater fear than death. Think of the times you've been unhappy at being woken up when you just wanted to sleep. Now imagine that nothing, in this universe or any universe could guarantee that you will not be revived, again, and again, ad infinitum. What point would life have then?

Quid est ergo tempus?

2011-03-23T14:10:00.021Z

On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 10:24:12
Sergio asked this question:

Dear Philosopher,

My name is Sergio, I'm from Italy and I like spending time reading your page. During my studies I've got stuck in a real big problem:

QUID EST ERGO TEMPUS? WHAT IS TIME?

It might look simple to answer but it isn't for me, that's why I need your help.

In Italian (and maybe in English too) we talk about time as if we are the owner of it (sorry I don't have time for you, I don't want waste my time, etc.).

Sometimes we talk about time like if it's negative for us (the time was bad with that girl, she is 30 but she looks like she was 40).

Or like the time is something far away from us, for example when we have a problem and we can't find a solution (the time will bring the answers).

Or we talk about the relation between time and space.

Those things mean the we use time, it's ours, but doesn't really say QUID EST ERGO TEMPUS?

Can you help me to find a solution?

Regards,

Sergio

P.S. I'm not really looking for Husserl or Kant or St Augustine or what the other people say about time, I'd like to know what you think about time.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, Sergio, but I really don't know the answer to your question, 'What is time?' Like St Augustine, I seem to know what time is, so long as nobody asks me, but when someone asks, then I don't know.

I think this 'not knowing' points to something very deep. It isn't just a matter of some knowledge which I don't have yet, or which I would like to have. I'm not even sure if it's correct to say that time is unknowable, something outside or beyond human knowledge or understanding. Time, if anything, is too close to be out there, too close, even, for knowledge. However you try to get a handle on the nature of time, you find that you are talking about something else, related to time (for example, space).

I term which I have heard in this context is 'promiscuous'. Time is a promiscuous concept because it is mixed up with so many things. You can't explain time in terms of movement, because movement presupposes time. You can't define time as something that exists, because to exist is to exist in time. And so on. However philosophers try to explain time or theorize about it, they end up chasing their own tails.

What I will do is outline a theory of time which is not my theory of time, but simply my construction on what you have said. In other words, what I am offering is your theory of time, according to what you have told me. What you've said, in recalling familiar ways in which we talk about time, is very revealing.

For want of a better term, I will call this theory the 'agent theory of time'. By that I don't mean the obvious point that action or agency presuppose time, that doing or acting would be inconceivable in a world without time, whatever that would mean. (I'm also aware that in traditional theology, God is conceived to exist outside of time, rendering the question of how God acts on the world problematic. But more of that in a minute.)

What I mean is, rather, that according to this theory, your theory, time is an agent. Time does things, or has the power to do things:

• To have time, to own it, is like having money. Just as I can use the money in my pocket to buy things, so I can use the time I have available, this is a power which I have, which can be taken away from me. My time can be wasted or stolen. Time is money. You can use money to buy time, or use up time to gain money by earning interest on your capital.

• Time does things to people; to the unfortunate 30-year old woman, time has been unkind, her features show the ravages of time, the cares and worries that time has wrought. In colloquial English, we have the expression (now somewhat stilted and old-fashioned) 'How goes the enemy?', meaning, 'What is the time?' Time is the enemy that all of us have to contend with at some time or other.

• And sometimes, too, time is our friend and ally; a solution will come to the problem I am worrying about if only I wait long enough. Time is secretive. You can guess but you can never know for sure what time will bring, or even whether what it brings is something that we want or something that we don't want.

The agent theory of time is a mythological view of time, which like all myths seeks to render comprehensible something of great importance to us that we cannot control or understand, by a process of personification.

On a hunch, I looked up 'God of time' and found this article in Wikipedia:

In Greek mythology, Chronos (Ancient Greek: Χρόνος) in pre-Socratic philosophical works is said to be the personification of time. His name in Modern Greek also means 'year' and is alternatively spelled Chronus (Latin spelling) or Khronos. Chronos was imagined as an incorporeal god. Serpentine in form, with three heads — that of a man, a bull, and a lion. He and his consort, serpentine Ananke (Inevitability), circled the primal world-egg in their coils and split it apart to form the ordered universe of earth, sea and sky.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronos

So much for mythology. Is there any truth in this idea, or is it just another pre-rational belief which human beings have cast aside on the road through philosophy to science? Could there be a God of time?

I may not know what time is, but can I venture a view about what time is not?

I don't know.

There could be a God of time. Why not? Forget the Biblical story of Creation, of how the world was made in six days, 'and on the seventh the Lord rested'. If we take this story literally it would mean that the God of the Bible did not create literally everything. He is subject to time, just like every finite being.

My story would begin with a different God, a God truly outside of time who creates a world also outside of time, a world which reflects His eternal glory like the sun shining through a stained glass cathedral window. (This image is from Richard Wollheim's book F.H. Bradley talking about McTaggart's vision of the 'unreality' of time. In McTaggart's theory of eternally loving spirits, we are the figures in the stained glass.)

Eternal glory is a fine thing. But it gets boring (after a while, ahem). Then came along Chronos, the God of time who finally made things... interesting.

I don't believe this. But I can see the point of it. I can imagine it. I don't care what physics says about time. Physics isn't the last word, whatever the Stephen Hawkinses of this world might think. If you believe that there could have been a world outside of time, if that notion is not logically self-contradictory, then two things follow:

First, McTaggart is wrong. His view of time, the metaphysical claim that time is ultimately unreal, is false. But it is contingently true of a world that might have existed, instead of this world. There could have been a world outside of time, but, in fact, there isn't. The world, as we all know despite McTaggart's arguments, is a world in time.

Secondly, if you try to imagine who might be listening when you say your prayers, you can only imagine the God of time. A God outside of time can do nothing for you. You might as well pray to the number 42. As it happens, I am an atheist. But if I wasn't an atheist, then the God I would worship is the God of time.

The philosopher as entertainer

2011-03-14T09:30:00.035Z

On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 04:16:53
Jim asked this question:

Your take on Alan Watts as a Philosopher. He said that he considered himself a 'philosophical entertainer'. Do you agree with him?

There are several things one might agree or disagree with in Alan Watts' seemingly self-deprecating assessment of his lifetime contribution to philosophy. Was Watts (just) a philosophical entertainer? Can you be a philosopher who seeks (merely) to entertain? Can (genuine) philosophy be entertaining? Is all philosophy (ultimately) mere entertainment — for the intellect?

I have not made an extensive study of Alan Watts' works, but I did enjoy two or three of his more popular books. One that made a particular impression on me is The Book On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. I can say, hand on heart, that it is a book that altered the course of my life, not by a massive amount, but enough to earn a permanent place in memory of 'books that have changed me'. Very readable, not too long, the book is a heavily sugared pill. The pill in question is the mind-blowing proposition that we are all 'It'.

Two metaphors which have stuck with me are Watts description of the 'crackpot universe', the world as materialists (or indeed Cartesian dualists) see it, and the description of the illusion which he is seeking to combat, that you and I are 'egos wrapped up in bags of skin'. I had that image in my mind when I wrote my doctoral thesis, which develops a 'dialectic of the ego and truth illusions'. Maybe it wasn't exactly what Watts intended, but that's often the way with philosophical influences.

It was Jerry (not G.A.) Cohen of Birkbeck College who first put me on to Alan Watts. Jerry was one of those philosophers who were trying desperately hard to think outside the box of academic philosophy (as it then was in the 1970s, not a lot different from the way it is now). An anonymously written tract which I read on Jerry's recommendation was The Right to Be Greedy: Theses on the Practical Necessity of Demanding Everything.

One thing I have not changed my views about is that the ultimate justification for philosophy is that it gets you seeing things differently. I value this, even if I do not necessarily agree with what I see. (What is 'agreement' anyway?) Watts, and the anonymous San Francisco Bay collective, certainly did that. The difference is that Watts does this in an entertaining way, he wins you over, while the anonymous tract is in parts gruelling, repetitive, didactic. The sort of thing a more impatient reader would dismiss as 'Marxist diatribe'. Which would be somewhat unfair, because it has its moments of beauty and clarity too.

Watts isn't diatribe. He is poetry. A book to pick you up if you're feeling low, to inspire and refresh you. How can that be wrong?

The thing you have to remember about Watts is that feeling 'inspired and refreshed', or gaining a glimpse into a metaphysical vision or a different way of seeing the world, is just a short cut to the truth. If you want the truth, if you want to grasp what it really means to say, e.g., that 'we are all It' then there's no alternative but to go off to a Buddhist monastery for a year. Meditation isn't any mere 'method of relaxation' the way these guys do it, for hours and hours at a time. No description in a book can ever be an adequate substitute.

I would guess that's the point Watts is making when he describes himself as a 'philosophical entertainer'.

But that doesn't altogether answer the question. Because I see it also as directed against myself. Blogging is almost by definition entertaining. You can't get too heavy or serious in a blog, not if you want to actually have readers. Both Tentative Answers and Hedgehog Philosopher are written very much for an audience, even if no-one could accuse me of trying to be popular. (These days, if you peek into the current page of my original blog Glass House Philosopher you might find anything, or nothing. I use it as a deletable scratch pad, to try things out, or just to while away idle moments.)

There's a growing trend amongst academic philosophers, especially in the States, for writing more popular works, I'm thinking of people like Daniel Dennett. But this has as much to do with book sales as anything (I'm not saying that's a bad reason). My motivation is different. I don't write 'serious' academic philosophy. At all. Apart from these blogs, the rest of my output consists of the 800–1000 word letters which I write to my students, for their eyes only (although a few have appeared for a day or so on my online scratchpad). I once wrote a book Naive Metaphysics and that's the only book I expect I will ever write. The motivation just isn't there.

Unlike Watts, I don't see myself as merely sugaring a pill. I don't really know any other way to work than by communicating, either to an audience I don't know, or with someone I do know. There's nothing held back, what you see is all there is. And yet, somehow, I feel on occasion (maybe not too often) I do manage to get down to the depths, as deeply as any philosopher can go.

Laugh if you like. To any straightlaced academic philosopher reading these words, the claim will probably sound preposterous. I really meant it when I described myself as 'the philosopher in a glass house'. It is essential to what I do that I do it in the way that I do it, in a public arena. It's my way of keeping honest. Academic philosophers have their own way — seminars, conferences and the rest — but that's for them not me. I don't want to be a part of that world.

I work hard at this. It's not off the cuff, even if that's often the impression that my writing gives (which arguably is a skill, not a defect). There is always the hope that in the process of trying to communicate I will grasp some new truth, some new insight, that I have not grasped before.

The paradox is that if these pages actually became popular, it would kill the idea stone dead. It is important that there be a few people reading these pages, some of whom I know and some I don't know. If I say something questionable or stupid they will tell me. But more than a few I couldn't handle. I'd have to give this up, find another way.

Watts would understand. In so many ways, the possibility of what I do depends on chance factors outside my control. For example, just enough students enrol in Pathways to Philosophy to put food on the table. Just enough decent material comes in to keep up the monthly issues of the Pathways e-journal. Just enough, but no more. There is a balance which comes from — who knows where. Maybe tomorrow the balance will be upset and all this will be swept away. I accept that, meekly, as a fact of life. It's in the lap of the gods.

— Which reminds me of another book by Watts which I liked, The Wisdom of Insecurity.

Suitable work for a pessimistic misanthrope

2011-03-08T13:52:00.014Z

On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 15:55:41
Robert asked this question:

I am a former engineer, and I have studied about 20 great cynic philosophers over the last 10 years. Diogenes, Voltaire, Buddha, Malthus and Schopenhauer are some of my favorites. I lived in the woods for 2 years to try and get a clearer view of cities, and find out what constitutes meaningful work.

Corruption seems very widespread within modern society. Everyone appears to be 'acting' in a very large play, which Shakespeare alluded to. I have a theory that 90% plus of the population of any given city has a small reality tunnel, and they may be a kind of farm animal that is working, paying rent, paying taxes and paying off debt for the better part of their adult life to benefit some wealthy elite(s).

I would like to know what your panel thinks would be a good livelihood for an intelligent cynical, stoical, pessimistic misanthrope?

World 1, as I now call it, lacks logic, proportion and integrity. I plan to spend the next year fishing and looking for silver coins on beaches with a metal detector. Is this where geniuses end up? I welcome your comments.

Well, Robert, to quote Morpheus, I know exactly what you mean.

The figure of Diogenes haunts me, ever since one of my students — coincidentally also called Robert — sarcastically referred to me as Diogenes in the marketplace. I made a page about Diogenes in Follydiddledah! (which I've referred to before). Being permanently hard up for cash, I don't have a lot of choices but at least I live in a house and not a barrel. I don't have to display my bare ass in the street while doing my daily ablutions.

My three teenage daughters rejected the academic world. One works as a nursing assistant in a local hospital, another is out all night doing gigs as a club DJ, the youngest is a singer in an aspiring heavy metal rock band. For lots of reasons, I'm not a good example — to anybody.

But let me tell you a story.

Yesterday, I travelled down to London to meet the people responsible for running the University of London International Programme in Philosophy. I was nervous about this meeting. Tutoring students for the University of London BA degree provides a good slice of my income. Yet I have done my best to remain aloof from the world of academic philosophy. For similar reasons to those you cite, I see it as a world mired in corruption. To survive as an academic philosopher today, you have to sell your soul many times over to ignorant administrators and the money men. You devise little tricks and ruses to enable you to carry on doing something worthwhile and real, while all the time you service the needs of a corrupt society steeped in materialist values.

I gave a good account of myself, while the inscrutable face of university bureaucracy smiled and nodded — and failed to understand a single word I was saying. I might as well have been speaking Ancient Greek.

The words of a song come to mind:

You've been with the professors
And they've all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You've been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald's books
You're very well read
It's well known.

But something is happening here
And you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Bob Dylan 'Ballad of a Thin Man'

I would love to spend the rest of my life fishing and looking for coins on beaches with a metal detector. As long as I had my laptop and an internet connection — because I don't believe in hiding my light under a bushel.

You've got to shake your fists at lightning now
You've got to roar like forest fire
You've got to spread your light like blazes
All across the sky
They're going to aim the hoses on you
Show 'em you won't expire
Not till you burn up every passion
Not even when you die

Joni Mitchell 'Judgement of the Moon and Stars (Ludwig's Tune)'

If only.

But what will actually happen is that I will remain here for quite a while yet. It wouldn't be fair on the kids who lost their mother to lose their father as well. And they still haven't learned how to cook.

I will continue to expend all my passion loudly declaiming to my audience of twenty-seven (or however many it was yesterday, I haven't checked the web stats) for no reason other than my own pathetic need and vanity, but at least I recognize that fact. That's got to count for something.

You can't take it with you. Don't envy the 'wealthy elite', they may have the best healthcare but it won't save them in the end.

Meanwhile, all you rich and great cocksucking bastards, get out of my sunshine!

The fierce urgency of now

2011-02-28T10:32:00.049Z

On Thur, Feb 24, 2011 at 17:12:01
Brian asked this question:

President Obama used the phrase 'the fierce urgency of now'. I understand 'now' likely functions rhetorically as being current times. However, can the now be urgent? The present is the present.

My first reaction to this question was, 'How typically Obama, to over-egg the pudding. What could be stronger, rhetorically, than 'the urgency of now'? Why does the urgency have to be 'fierce'? 'Urgency' is already an urgent word. Then I saw the U-Tube clip Senator Obama on the stump in Milwaukee MI on 15 February 2008 and caught the attribution to 'Dr King'.

Here is the original quote, from Dr Martin Luther King's famous 'I have a dream' speech, delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC:

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm

Whoever has transcribed the speech has taken care to capitalize the word 'Now'. When Dr King spoke, his audience didn't need persuading that this was a truly momentous time, a turning point in American history. This was a time over which battles had been fought and were continuing to be fought, a time for anger, heroism, and fierce resolve. The words are apposite.

That doesn't get Obama off the hook. Obama offers as an example of why now is so fiercely urgent — while the audience of supporters and party workers wildly cheer him on — the fact that 'people... have never paid more for gas at the pumps'. One feels there ought to be a law against this kind of thing. A historical and literary treasure, studied in schools up and down the land, pillaged for sound bites!

No matter. I'm not taking into account the wider context, American politics, where theatricality and going over the top is part of the hallowed tradition. Overlooking the banal example (chosen for 'ordinary folks'), maybe it did seem to those caught up in the emotion of the hustings that this was a 'defining moment in American history', even though such defining moments seem to occur rather more frequently than a defining moment ought to do.

OK, but what's this got to do with philosophy? I picked Brian's question because it has a strong resonance for me. There is an issue about now which admittedly has nothing to do with the question whether this particular time has any special historical significance. Every now is urgent, at the time when we consider it. This very moment, as I tap the keys on my computer keyboard and watch these words appear on the screen, is a unique time, the time that I have reached in 60 years of life on this planet. The rest of my life begins now.

I have wrestled with this question for as long as I have had an interest in philosophy, and that's two thirds of my life.

Paradoxically, the very fact that you have singled out one particular now amongst all the nows you could have singled out, already gives it a special significance, regardless of external considerations. We fill our minutes, hours and days with activity, we don't notice the perpetual birth and death of each individual now. Yet if you just stop to reflect, just for one moment, the train crashes to halt. This time is unique, and special, as no other time in the history of the universe could possibly be.

There is an existential resonance. I can change the entire course of my life — if I choose to, now. Maybe that's part of it?

The technical term for the property which the word 'now' has, which it shares with terms such as 'this', 'that', 'he', 'she', 'I', 'you', 'here', 'there' is indexicality. An indexical expression derives an essential part of its meaning from the actual circumstances of utterance. 'Now' refers to the time of utterance. These circumstances resist definition in general terms. It is generally agreed that natural language could not function without indexical expressions, even though it is possible to replace particular occurrences of indexicals with a non-indexical description.

The semantics for indexical expressions is an issue in the philosophy of language. We need indexicals, yet there are some quite tricky issues to resolve if one is seeking to give a systematic account of how these expressions are used, as part of a theory of meaning for natural language. However, what the various theories of indexicals have in common is a form of generalization which applies to all 'thises', all 'nows' etc. That's what makes it a theory. The individual cases, actual examples of the use of 'this' or 'now', are its 'theorems'.

What this all boils down to is that there is no possible way in which I could express in words the 'specialness' or 'uniqueness' of now which doesn't automatically translate into an explanation of why every 'now' is unique and special. Or, equivalently, why leaving aside contingent historical circumstances, no now is either unique, or special. As I state laconically in Ch.18 of Naive Metaphysics, 'Every time gets its turn to be now.'

Brian concedes that a tautology can sometimes serve a rhetorical purpose. Wittgenstein comments in an often-quoted passage, ''War is war' is not an example of the law of identity, either' (Philosophical Investigations p.221). What is meant by the remark, 'War is war' is something like, 'What do you expect? In war, innocent people die.' When your boss says, 'Now is now' in that particular urgent tone of voice, what he means is, 'I want you to do the task I set you now, not in half-an-hour's time!'

Typing these words, I think of the number of times I have looked at this question and not made one inch of progress. I feel I know that of all the times that have been or will be, this time, now, is different and yet nothing I can say suffices to convey that difference. 'What you can't say, you can't say, and you can't whistle it either' (C.D. Broad, commenting on the last paragraph of Wittgenstein's Tractatus — the allusion is to Wittgenstein's skill at whistling entire concertos, note perfect). In half an hour's time, reading these words back, the metaphysical urgency will no longer be there. What I referred to as 'now' will be merely 'then', one of many nows that I have threaded my way through as I progress through my life, like so many beads on a string.

When I started composing my answer to Brian, just for a moment I thought, or imagined, that it was possible that this time will be different, this time I will succeed in thinking something about nowness of now that I have never thought before. I haven't. I didn't. It all comes back to the same thing. I don't see this as a defeat, but rather as assertion of my vigilance as a metaphysically minded philosopher. There are certain problems, certain questions — and this is one of them — which you must never let go of. It's part of experiencing the wonder.

Rewiring the brain

2011-02-21T11:33:00.027Z

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 04:31:24
Robert asked this question:

Are there some key mental/ psychological characteristics of those who enter the study of philosophy? Meaning, are there internal mental phenomena that occur in the psyche of those who first enter into studying philosophy (and who can actually grasp and internalize the material)?

Do people have parallel experiences of mental phenomena during their initial exposure to philosophy? Can one almost detect their own mental rewiring and the side effects of that wiring?

Are there time periods where people, who are studying philosophy, actually balance between two world views and the result of which is the inability to function normally? Can studying philosophy trigger underlying psychological problems? Can philosophy bring about ones propensity for schizophrenia for example?

Robert's question follows on naturally from my answer to Nastik last week. It is interesting that over 15 years of running Pathways to Philosophy I have gathered a lot of data on how students react to the challenge of philosophy, how it changes the way they think, how it changes them. And yet, I have comparatively little idea about how all this feels on the inside. Here's a telling response to my post last week on Philosophy as process from one of my more articulate students:

Yes to pleasure — the occasional experience of exhilaration, the aah moments, but more often pain, not to mention F*** it, I give up! Yes to mental gym, and the work-out is more demanding than I'd ever have imagined. And emphatically yes to wanting to know the answers — but in my case knowing that I, lacking the necessary equipment, will never be able to work any of them out myself. I'm glad you have your sense of being in the presence of the sublime — I don't know how you could carry on otherwise.

The vast majority of my students are different from me in one important respect, typified by this example. The most impressive thing, for the beginner, is the sheer difficulty of the subject. And one of the early decisions that one makes is that one is aiming for self-enrichment and self-improvement — and pleasure, to be sure — but not to become a philosopher. So, yes, you have to 'grasp and internalize the material' if you are to make any progress. But there is a cut-off point. You recognize your limits, and accept this as a fact. Then you can relax and drink at the deep well of philosophy and feel refreshed.

I realize that this might sound rather elitist. But I am talking about philosophy as a life choice. Apart from professional philosophers (not all of whom I would describe as 'philosophers' in the sense I mean), I don't get a lot of opportunity to talk to people who feel this way, who have made this life choice, who see the designation 'philosopher' as closest to what they truly are, or at least strive to be. Most of my students have successful careers in other fields. They are intelligent, inquiring, but they are happy to remain students of philosophy. They know their limits and stick to them.

What this boils down to is that in answering Robert's question I really only have myself to go on.

The human brain is versatile. You can develop your interests in a wide variety of ways — requiring very different ways of thinking — and not feel any great sense of strain. I have experienced this for myself. I like computers, I like photography, I like designing web sites, I like music. I used to like chess until I realized that I was so bad at it, that there was no point in pursuing that particular interest (although I still occasionally play against the computer when I'm feeling in a sufficiently masochistic mood).

It has been hypothesized that maybe this has something to do with the fact that there are two hemispheres of the brain with (to some extent) specialized functioning. I'm a rather peculiar case, in that in that I can only read comfortably with my left eye (my right eye is 'lazy') which means that information gathered from reading gets routed through the 'wrong' side (the right hemisphere). I would love to see a scientific study of this. It might explain why I have such immense difficulty in reading generally. (Of course, in the absence of evidence from research what I have said is not much more than idle speculation.)

Yes, I had a life before I 'discovered' philosophy. At one time, I wanted to be a scientist (I started a BSc in Chemistry at Leeds University but I was a lousy student). Then I discovered photography. I can remember vividly what it was like, doing dangerous chemistry experiments in the bathroom, then a few years later prowling the streets with my camera. Fond memories. But the person who did those things had no idea what lay ahead. (See the account I wrote in 1999 My philosophical life.)

And yet — and this is the ironic thing — human beings inevitably tell the story of their lives from a biased perspective. I can't help feeling that somehow, even then, I knew that I was bound for philosophy. At 12, I was nearly expelled from my barmitzvah classes for proudly telling a fellow student that I was an atheist. I have a memory fragment of wrestling with the God question in the toilet, calling God every rude name I could think of, scared of the punishment I would receive, but nothing happened. God ignored my insults. At some point, He just vanished. Only later, I discovered that this was a question you could argue about, logically. But the decision had already been made.

Then there's that memory fragment I had from when I was much younger, maybe 6 or 7 (discussed in Hedgehog Philosopher Day 29). What was that about? It feels so real to me now. Can I really say, for certain, that that experience was my first inkling that I would be a philosopher?

To cut a long story short, I like to think that some of the things I did were somehow explained by an innate propensity, a natural inclination towards philosophy. But there is no way to verify this.

So now, we skip to my first year at Birkbeck College London. I am going hell for leather. At every lecture I take copious notes, carefully filed in a large red binder. I stay up until 3 am in the morning solving a logic proof. (I succeeded, but what if I'd failed? would I have carried on?) — What is going on in my head?

This is what Robert wants to know. It seems to me that the study of philosophy has this peculiarity. That if you're serious about the subject — serious enough to want to be a philosopher — then everything you do and every interest that you have undergoes a form of mutation. I was no longer a photographer, I was a philosopher with a camera. I was no longer a hippie lookalike singing Bob Dylan songs, I was a philosopher with a guitar (who still looked like a hippie). Most important of all, everyone I met got to know very quickly about 'my' philosophy. I had discovered a way of being in the world.

I guess what this is working up to is that this isn't really about the brain. As I have already argued, the brain is versatile, it can cope with almost any new input. This is about the struggle to define oneself, to decide how you face the world and how the world sees you. Of course there will be hiccups in the process of transition. You do feel sometimes that you are going mad (good advice to take a complete break when this happens — go for a walk, have sex, do something distracting). Robert Pirsig's bestseller Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance paints a vivid picture of a philosophy student ('Phaedrus' named after Plato's dialogue) who goes over the brink from too much mental exertion — reading that may have saved me from a similar fate.

You've got to push yourself a little bit — actually rather a lot — if you are serious. But I would never take a student whom I suspected had mental problems. For the same reason you wouldn't let someone who had a heart condition do martial arts training. That's just asking for trouble. On the other hand, none of us is perfect. Maybe it is even true that a painful sense of one's own mental imperfections is what drives one to philosophy. As the cheesy sign you sometimes see in offices says, 'You don't have to be mad to work here, but it helps.'

Philosophy as a process

2011-02-14T11:45:00.024Z

On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 11:00:24
Nastik asked this question:

Suppose someone objected, If philosophy is ongoing process, what's the point of engaging in it? You'll never get any certain answers; your search will never end. Such a prospect is thoroughly depressing. How would you respond to this criticism?

I've been wrestling with Nastik's question lately. There's a very easy, almost knee-jerk response that philosophers sometimes give to this kind of objection, along the lines of, 'The point of philosophy is that it is a journey.' As a philosopher, you are always on the way towards something but you never finally 'arrive'. Every stopping point is just another stage in the journey.

This response is wrong in so many ways I don't even think I can list them all. But I will just look at one or two.

When is a journey more important than the arrival? I recently bought myself a classic car on eBay. I hadn't driven for ten years. What finally prompted my decision was the realization that I didn't need a car. My 36 year old Scimitar GTE is strictly for joy riding. We're lucky to live in a part of the UK (on the edge of the Peak National Park) which has some great roads. You pick a destination — there are many to choose from — drive there by the most picturesque route and then drive back. There's no point to it other than the pleasure of the ride.

If I'm actually going somewhere, and the distance is short enough, I walk. I walk the two and a half miles to my office. Otherwise, I take the bus or the train. One of the things about an old car is that you can never be certain that you will reach your destination without mishaps. When you're joyriding, it's part of the sense of adventure.

Is that what philosophy is like? Firstly, there is far more pain than pleasure in a philosophical journey. I mean, if you are really serious about it. Philosophy can be agonizing. You do it, you endure, because you are trying to get somewhere and for the sake of getting there. And when you fail, which given the nature of the activity is often a foregone conclusion, on top of the pain is a sense of disappointment and regret.

You can study philosophy for pleasure, if that's what you want. You can follow the thoughts and the lives of the great philosophers, take a dip in the deep waters of two and a half millennia of philosophical thought, and come out feeling exhilarated and refreshed. Many of my students feel this way. But my best students know that there is more to it than that.

There's another way in which one might seek to justify philosophy as a process. This is along the lines of the mental gym where you exercise your thinking muscle. 'No pain, no gain.' You don't give up when the going gets tough, you try harder. All the time you know that your mental powers are being steadily improved. In the mental gym, there's no such thing as failure, because every hour you put in makes your mind stronger, better.

That's fine if you see philosophy as just another means of self-improvement. But if you are really gripped by a philosophical question, you want to know the answer. In athletic competitions, something counts as 'winning' or 'losing'. If you are serious about athletics, not just someone who goes to a gym twice a week to work out, then you want to win. Yes, there is satisfaction in knowing you did your best. But that's not sufficient compensation for coming second.

Why study philosophy? 'For pleasure,' is one good answer. 'For self-improvement,' is another good answer. But neither of these answers gets anywhere close to the core of what philosophy is about. Ultimately, there is no justification for engaging in philosophy other than the brute fact that one finds the problems and questions of philosophy gripping. And if you are gripped, really gripped, then you want to know the answers, just as much as the runner wants to win.

So let's consider 'the philosopher' as a character motivated, neither by pleasure or the desire for self-improvement but solely by the desire for knowledge. The desire for answers. You can satisfy this desire, and many serious and fine academic philosophers do this, by picking problems which can be solved. The implication of Nastik's question, they would say, is simply false.

Open any journal of academic philosophy and you will find contributions which advance the study of philosophy by answering questions, solving difficulties, clarifying confusions. In principle, the situation is no different in academic philosophy than any other academic subject, say, chemistry, or history. Meanwhile, the big questions remain matters of incessant debate. But the progress of the subject isn't judged solely by the progress made with big questions. Physics is not refuted by the likelihood that there will never be a fully consistent 'Theory of Everything'.

That would be fine if you are content to spend your time as a philosopher tweaking theories or debating points of logic. As I am not. Like many committed philosophers I also want answers to the big questions. I'm not satisfied with indefinitely putting off any hope of a solution. But isn't this a strange kind of paradox? I know that the ultimate problems can't be cracked. I know that the effort to find a solution is futile. And yet, I feel compelled to keep trying.

This doesn't depress me. It doesn't exactly fill me with joy either. Because it isn't really about me. Feelings count for something but they are not the most important consideration. Nietzsche understood that there was something more important than happiness (which 'only Englishmen' seek as an end in itself) and that is to have, or to be an arrow, to be possessed by a sense of direction and purpose. Yes, I do feel something, deeply, the sense that in doing this I am fulfilling my purpose even though I couldn't tell you exactly what that purpose is. To know that I would have to know the ultimate answers, and I already said, I don't believe I will ever know.

When I do philosophy, when I grapple with its insoluble problems, I have the sense that I am in the presence of something sublime. That feeling is something I value, even though, as I said, feeling is not the most important consideration. In the presence of the sublime, other things — things which are not sublime but merely mundane, the distractions of everyday living — are put into their proper perspective. And it is good to have a proper perspective.

Capitalism and poverty of desire

2011-02-08T12:05:00.020Z

On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 13:18:52
Kramer asked this question:

How can philosophy help in addressing a poverty of desire? Living in a capitalist society leads to spending most of my time towards earning a living and caring for my dependents. I feel I must try out different vocations to figure out the job I would like best but then you would not know if you really like a job unless you put in sufficient time. And I don't have much time and I don't know what I like. I just live and this causes a poverty of desire.

The claim that human beings in capitalist society work 'just to live' rather than to fulfil their 'human essence' was the criticism famously levelled by Marx originally in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. As a capitalist sympathetic to Marx's ideas about the human essence and the need to fulfil it, I feel sorry that so many people spend so much of their lives in dead-end jobs just working to make ends meet, I really do. It's something of which I have hardly any experience, not because I am capitalist living of the sweat of the working class, but because of my innate laziness. I lack the Protestant work ethic. You won't get me to work by threats or rewards. Only the prospect of fulfilling my human essence is sufficient to motivate me.

As a result of this, I am poor. If I had been more 'responsible', my family would be better provided for but at least we have a roof over our heads and we don't starve. I have spent two thirds of my six decades doing more or less what I do now. I reckon I'm pretty good at my job — philosophizing on a point. I don't get a lot of praise, but then I never needed other people's approval to motivate me either.

This morning, I knew that another Tentative Answer was overdue. I looked forward to the prospect with a mixture of apprehension, nervousness and slight annoyance at myself for not having written my weekly answer last week so that I could spend the rest of my day watching the clouds go by as I love to do.

But then, part of being lazy is not doing a task at the first opportunity, but rather on the deadline when you absolutely know that you can't postpone it another day.

What advice can I give Kramer?

First, about Marx. It is absolutely wrong to think that the need to work at a task you don't like is a criticism that Marx laid at capitalism's door. Not at all. How much work is required and what kind depends to a large extent on things out of our control. In the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust the survivors will be working their guts out just to stay alive. In a future super-technological age of plenty, perhaps very little work will be needed at all, maybe just a couple of hours on a Friday.

But let's just tackle things as they are.

Regardless of how society is organized or what political system human beings live under, work will be necessary. Marx understood this. Doing what is necessary, pulling your weight, making your contribution to society is part of what is required to fulfil one's human essence. There are some jobs that only a masochist would enjoy, and there are not nearly enough masochists to go round. But the jobs have to be done, nonetheless. Say, it's your turn to clean out the lavatories. The point, however, is that provided everyone pulls their weight (and barring the nuclear holocaust scenario) you have sufficient time time to do things which you enjoy, which enhance you and express your individuality.

The young Marx's criticism of capitalist society was that the very best of the worker is used up in the daily grind. the worker's only pleasures the animal pleasures of eating, sex and sleeping. Then the whole things starts again. Marx believed that to sell your labour rather than give it freely out of the joyful desire to make a useful contribution (including cleaning out lavatories) already condemns you. You're nothing better than a prostitute. But then so are the all those talented people who choose wealth and comfort over artistic integrity. In a world that runs on money, we sell our souls because we lose our sense of value — regardless of whether the general standard of living is high or low.

Criticism of materialism is nothing new. Gloomy Diogenes was there before Marx (see Follydiddledah page 6). Pissing and shitting in the street, begging coins of passers by in return for a caustic philosophical discourse, that's not my idea of the good life. But freedom to express your human essence has a value, and that's one way to be free if you can accept the discomfort. Be a bum. — But I forgot, you have a family.

(This reminds me of a beautiful short novel Knulp — actually three short stories — written by Herman Hesse in 1915, which makes a good case that the life of a tramp isn't that bad if you are one of those rare people who has the right qualities.)

This isn't the place to launch into a criticism of Marxist philosophy. I will just say that a society of brotherly and sisterly love, where we are all just one happy family and everyone does the work required without needing to be motivated by material reward isn't something that anyone has every believed possible, apart from maybe the early Christians. That's what you would have to achieve in order to get rid once and for all of the evil of money.

Kramer, your problem isn't about the evils of capitalism, real though they may be. Accept that you may need to choose between jobs you don't like, and that the best choice you can possibly make is more likely than not a job you won't enjoy doing — at least not too much. But still, there's the pleasure of social contact, work mates, the various compensations that help you get through the day. Be prepared to take a cut in pay, in order to work for someone human rather than a bastard (as many bosses unfortunately are). You have obligations to your family but those obligations don't include self-sacrifice. If you sell yourself into miserable wage slavery, your value to them reduces to the money you earn.

(Which reminds me of another novel, or novella, Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis coincidentally also written in 1915.)

Find an interest in life, outside work or family. You can probably guess what I'm going to say. You found the Ask a Philosopher web site searching for sites related to philosophy. Take a philosophy course. Develop your mind. Don't do it because of the super-slim chance of making philosophy your career. The chances are, you're not cut out for it. Do it because it is one way — very satisfying, as I have discovered — to realize your human essence.

And do other things. Don't forget your friends, keep yourself fit, engage in something artistic, look after your garden. Whatever talents you have, exploit them. Accept the necessity for work but have a life as well.

Uses for the dead

2011-01-31T22:24:00.018Z

On Tues, Jan 25, 2011 at 21:23:57
Marion asked this question:

I've just read an article titled 'Row Over Crematorium Heating For Swimmers' which details plans of a local council, in an attempt to save energy, 'recycling' the heat generated from an adjacent crematorium to heat a swimming pool. Some have slammed the idea calling it, 'Sick and an insult to local residents', and I agree with them... Is this not ethically unacceptable?

Here's the link to the BBC TV News story which begins, in typical laconic BBC style, 'The heavy curtains hide a world that few of us want to think about. But the people of Redditch are being forced to do just that...'. The local Council, in a bid to save around £15,000 a year, want to pipe some of the heat from a crematorium to a nearby leisure centre. There have been protests. Supporters point out that the practice is fairly commonplace in Sweden. Another British council is already using the heat from a crematorium to heat administration buildings.

I am not sure that this is a question of ethics rather than taste. Imagine a glass bottomed swimming pool where you could view the human corpses in the process of being burned to supply heat to the pool. That would be rather ghoulish. Although it would certainly make an original tourist attraction, better even than the London Dungeon. However, I can fully understand that there are those who would not want to swim in a pool knowing where the heat came from, even if they couldn't actually see the process going on while they were practising their strokes.

When philosophers think about this kind of issue, there is a regrettable tendency towards excessive rationalism, which includes appeals to utilitarian thinking ('the greatest happiness for the greatest number'). I have no truck with this. My response to Marion's question hinges on questions of ethical rights and wrongs. I am not assuming any particular view of of the nature of ethics. I shall also leave aside the question of good or bad taste, as this is something philosophers have a tendency to get rather pompous about.

Philosophers argue a lot. Sometimes, the arguments get so tangled that ordinary folk are left far behind. However, the true nature of philosophical thinking, its inner essence, isn't found in complex logical argumentation but in the determined attempt to see things differently. This is as much about feeling as it is about logic. To feel appropriately rather than inappropriately is part of what we mean by 'rational behaviour'. Those who put excessive faith in rationalism — the Mr Spocks of this world — lack to some extent the capacity for appropriate feeling.

So how should we feel about the swimming pool news story? Here is one possible take. I'm not saying that this is the only way.

I would like to take a step back and consider the question of how we dispose of the dead, in relation to what it means to live out the span of a human life, not for ourselves, or even those who know us or are affected by our actions, but in terms of ecology. There are many ways in which one can look at human life and its value, but one issue which is becoming increasingly urgent concerns the question of how each of us, during our lifetime, contributes towards consuming the resources of this planet, and the detritus that we leave in our wake.

Imagine on your death bed being shown the vast mountain of refuse that you created during your lifetime. Not something to be proud of. At a time when the very life of the planet is at stake, human achievements seem rather puny in comparison with the consequences of generation upon generation of reckless rubbish generators fouling up the environment, then as a final insult, leaving their own mortal remains behind for others to dispose of.

Burial is an ancient practice. Some would place the beginning of civilization at the point where human beings conducted ceremonies for the burial of the dead. But at a certain point in human history — which may or may not yet have come, but is certainly very close — increasing population and dwindling space must inevitably reach the stage where the dead no longer have the right to take away space from the living. A person who lives out their natural life should depart this earth, not lay a permanent claim to some portion of it.

However, cremation is not the ideal answer either. Let's deal with this question of heat which seems to have so upset the Redditch residents. The amount of energy, in calories or BTUs required to convert a human corpse into ash is far greater than the calorific value of the corpse itself (notwithstanding very rare cases of so-called 'spontaneous combustion' — more accurately called auto-combustion — where the corpse supplies its own energy). All that excess energy goes up the chimney of the crematorium. It's not just a waste, in the economic sense (I fully accept that there is a limit to economic thinking, money is not the only consideration). It's adding insult to injury, after all the resources that we consumed during our lifetime.

I would like to see the dead disposed of in a way which gives something back. The swimming pool crematorium idea is not to everyone's taste. Well, you don't have to swim there, and you don't have to be cremated there. It's your choice. But I believe people should be permitted to choose.

Selling your body for medical use is another possibility which many find distasteful. However, in this case sheer economics make this a serious proposition for some people. A corpse in fair condition, fully exploited and mined for organs and tissue, is worth many thousands of pounds. It could be your most precious gift to your loved ones, as well as helping in a small way to make up for the resources you consumed while you were alive.

Nothing is what it seems

2011-01-24T10:50:00.044Z

On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 13:52:20
Louella asked this question:

Kindly explain the saying,

'NOTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS.'

or does REALITY exist?

thanks...

Louella has struck a nerve with her question. On the face of it, it looks like a beginner's question, the sort of thing that someone who hasn't had much exposure to philosophy would think about. 'Nothing is what it seems.' We know that isn't true, don't we? Some things are what they seem (e.g. the half-drunk cup of luke warm coffee on my desk is a half-drunk cup of luke-warm coffee), and some things aren't what they seem. We sometimes get the wrong impression of things. We correct that wrong impression, and then we see things aright.

But, actually — at least in certain moods — I am more inclined to think that all that's just superficial. What we term 'reality' is just a more or less coherent story, not the real truth about things whatever that may be. — I'm just describing a feeling, you don't need to think particularly deeply just to feel this, say, to feel the way Neo felt in The Matrix.

But note what I just said: 'not the real truth about things'. Louella goes on to ask, 'or does reality exist?' Either nothing is what it seems, or reality exists, but not both. That's the implication of her question. But I'm suggesting the opposite: In stating that 'nothing is what it seems', we have in mind, or imply, that there is something real, a real truth about things, which we can never know, or at least which is very difficult to know, or maybe only a few people know.

What if reality didn't exist? How would you describe that situation? Then everything is what it seems. A thing cannot fail to be what it seems unless reality exists, unless there is a way that thing 'really' is, which is different from the way it seems. If reality doesn't exist then everything is the way it seems to me, and everything is also the way it seems to you. If things seem different to you than they do to me, neither of us can be wrong. We are both right. My world-of-seeming is mine, and your world-of-seeming is yours.

But surely that's just... nuts? How could absolutely everything just be exactly as it seems? That would mean that I never a mistake or error about anything, that it is never necessary to correct my first impressions, that, basically, my beliefs are always true (and so are yours). One only needs to consider that a person's beliefs are are not always consistent with one another to realize the impossibility of what I've just stated.

Plato in his dialogue Theaetetus considered these questions. Interestingly, he didn't think that the idea was so 'nuts' that it was OK to ignore it. He puts the thesis, 'Everything is what it seems' in to the mouth of the great sophist Protagoras. (Some commenators would argue that this is a somewhat unfair gloss on Protagoras' famous statement, 'Man is the measure of all things.') Plato doesn't rest content with saying the obvious: that the very attempt to state the thesis leads to absurdity. He considers how one would have to think of knowledge if that hypothesis were accepted.

If there is no real distinction between 'seeming' and 'reality', then we can no longer think of statements as 'aiming at the truth', that is to say, aiming to correspond with the way things 'really are'. Instead, a statement becomes a tool which one uses to affect someone's behaviour. That's what a sophist aims to do in Plato's picture. As a result of listening to the sophist's discourse you are not 'informed' about 'reality' (because there is no reality). Rather, as the sophist would claim, you are made 'better' in some way. The athletics trainer helps you run faster. The rhetoric coach helps you to impress people with your speaking ability, that is to say, your ability to use words to influence or manipulate them.

In a Protagorean universe, according to Plato, everything as we 'know' it is turned upside down. Nothing is 'rational' or 'irrational', 'valid' or 'invalid', 'true' or 'false'. All one is permitted to say is that the verbal statements we make are either 'effective' or 'not effective'. Nor can one even speak of there being a 'truth' as to whether or not a statement is 'really' effective. All speech is propaganda, all thinking is reacting. In some ways, it is a perfect depiction of the world George Orwell horrifyingly portrays in his novel 1984. That's surely not what Protagoras or the other Greek sophists had in mind, but according to Plato it is the inevitable consequence of the relativist view of knowledge.

So what about that feeling I had, that maybe Louella is right and nothing is what it seems? All this, all of you, these... things around me are just shadows, as indeed am I myself. Plato talks eloquently about this too, in his dialogue Republic, in the allegory of the Cave. But, then, according to Plato, something is real, because you can get out of the cave — if you're clever enough, if you know how to work the dialectic. And then you will 'see', not with your eyes (which can never yield true knowledge) but with your mind. The perfect world of Forms.

But if Plato is right then something is what it seems, after all. The eternal Forms are what they seem (to the mind's eye). You cannot gaze upon the highest Form, the Form of the Good, and not know it for what it is, in its very being and essence.

If like me you think that this is all fairy tales — or 'the last fumes of evaporating reality' as Nietzsche describes it in Twilight of the Idols — then maybe you will begin to feel an unnerving sense of the threat that the Protagorean way of seeing things poses. I can't quite wholly believe in this familiar world, I can't fully accept it's 'reality'. But I can't see anything else either, no alternative, certainly no 'purer' or 'higher' world behind these deceptive appearances. Then, maybe, we really can't say for sure whether the Protagorean view, as Plato describes it in Theateteus might not after all be the only possibility left standing, after all the alternatives have fallen away.

If this is a Protagorean universe, then I am not arguing with you now. I am not making a case. This isn't logic and my words are not governed by any notion of validity. I am behaving — linguistically — a trick invented by a certain species of ape around 50 thousand years ago in order to improve their success rate in hunting non-speaking animals for food. Or whatever is the current explanation. Except of course that what I'm telling you now isn't 'knowledge', or even a 'probable theory'. Just words intended to produce an effect.

One of the more interesting developments in English-speaking analytic philosophy in the last century, was the idea of a clash between 'realist' and 'anti-realist' approaches to the nature of meaning and truth. A foremost figure in the debate is Michael Dummett who argued for an 'anti-realist' theory of meaning, along the lines of the later Wittgenstein's notion of 'language games'. (I first came across Dummett's views in his celebrated book Frege Philosophy of Language London, Duckworth 1973.) To know the meaning of a word or a statement is no more, or less, than to be competent in following the rules for using that word or statement, as accepted in one's local linguistic community.

Subsequently, in an interview (around 1980 in a religious program on TV exploring Dummett's Catholic faith) Dummett confided that his real desire — though he could not yet see a way to do this — was to argue for the necessary existence of God, in a manner similar to the idealist philosopher Berkeley. Rebounding from the Protagorean universe described in the anti-realist theory, there is no alternative to believing in God, if you want to defend your belief in knowledge, truth and rationality. When I saw the program, I was shocked by Dummett's frankness. My D.Phil thesis which I was working on at the time defended a stark version of anti-realism, without the God option.

I don't know exactly where Dummett stands on the God issue today. It is true that he has modified his views on the theory of meaning somewhat. But the stark challenge posed by the philosophy of anti-realism remains: believe in God — or something — or resign yourself to living in the world of 1984. I am aware that there are many analytic philosophers today who broadly follow Dummett's line who would dispute this claim. Wittgenstein believed he was merely combating illusions about our inner life and the 'grammar' of our language. Quietism does not necessarily lead to totalitarianism. However, I don't think that things are that easy or simple. I don't think we really know where we are. My impression is that the way things are going now, it would only take a couple of small steps to find ourselves living in an Orwellian universe.

Meanwhile, academic philosophers debate minutiae, not realizing the ground is being cut from under them.

Instinct and epistemic luck

2011-01-13T10:31:00.033Z

On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 22:13:08
Sydney asked this question:

I had my first class in critical thinking earlier today and my professor was unable to tell me if instinct was epistemic luck. I was wondering if you might be able to help answer this question?

Reading Sydney's question, my first, somewhat unkind thought was, 'No-one likes a smartass.' But then the question immediately came to mind, Why wouldn't someone qualified to teach critical thinking be able to answer Sydney's question? There is an answer: The term 'epistemic luck' is a piece of technical jargon, coined in the debate over epistemological theories following Edmund Gettier's landmark 1963 article, 'Is Knowledge Justified True Belief?' If you aren't trained as an academic philosopher (or studying for a degree in philosophy) it is fairly unlikely that you would have come across that term. Sydney has obviously been doing a lot of extra-curricular reading.

The curious fact is, you don't need to be a trained philosopher in order to teach critical thinking, at least the way this subject is often taught at colleges and universities. I'm not offering comment on whether that is a good or bad thing.

(Ignorance cuts both ways. My lack of knowledge of the current state of debate in critical thinking leaves me totally unable to answer the question what view critical thinking takes about instinctive knowledge generally, knowing but not being able to explain how you know, etc. I can live with that.)

If you want to get up to speed with the debate over epistemic luck, you could start by Googling "Rocking Horse Winner" or "chicken sexer", plus Epistemology. These are standard examples of cases where we might be inclined to say that someone 'knows' even though they are unable to explain how they know (the little lad who mysteriously predicts the winners of tomorrow's horse races, workers trained to sort newborn chicks into male and female by subtle differences in their look or feel — or is it?).

I am somewhat bemused by these debates, even though I regularly mark essays sent to me by my students taking the University of London BA module in Epistemology. Epistemology is one of those areas of philosophy that has increasingly acquired the aspect of chess opening theory, with every possible avenue of inquiry, every argument and counterargument explored and elaborated on ad nauseam. No better evidence could be put forward that current academic philosophy has drifted into a new age of scholasticism, driven in part by the incessant need to publish or lose tenure.

However, whenever I begin to feel sick, or bored, I remind myself of things that matter to me in relation to the question of knowledge. Then it all gets real again. Knowledge matters, no more so than to the philosopher pursuing knowledge.

I rely a lot on my instincts. I have hunches. I will pursue an investigation, expending many days, weeks or even months on a question because I have a feeling that it might lead somewhere. What wasted effort, if that feeling could not be relied upon, or did not at least promise some probability of success! Then there are issues in philosophy which I take a strong position on, where I am sure that i am right, even though I know that are those who take the completely opposite view who are just as sure that they are right and I am wrong. How is that possible?

Human beings, like other members of the animal kingdom, have instincts which we have acquired through the process of Darwinian natural selection, although because we are language users and reasoners, the instinctive side of human knowledge has been pushed very much to the sidelines. Instincts are much less useful to us than they are, say, to a pair of nesting birds or a pride of lions. I guess my direct answer to Sydney's question would be that if you believe something 'on instinct', say, that beneath the false smile of the person extending their arm and hand in greeting there lurk aggressive intentions, and that instinct is a genuine biological instinct, with an aetiology, an explanation of its reliability, then that isn't a case of 'luck' epistemologically speaking. It is not an accident when the person who roused your suspicions turns out to be a thief or confidence trickster.

The problem is, there are many, perhaps many more examples where one 'feels something on instinct' where there is no valid explanation that a more knowledgeable observer could provide. Then is it just mere guesswork? If you turn out to be right, was that just luck? I'm not sure that it is, always. Maybe I've watched too many American TV detective shows, but it seems to me that hunches can be valid, even if there is no explanation of how you could possibly know, or what it was that gave you the hunch. There is an art to judgement, which no amount of methodological analysis will ever unravel. This applies, in different though related ways, to police work, sports like golfing and archery, or the judgement of a scientific researcher or philosopher.

Of course, one has to exercise caution here. It's so easy to persuade oneself that one's hunch is valid (it wouldn't be a hunch if it didn't feel that special way). But how can you possibly know? More to the point, why should anyone else, who doesn't feel the hunch that you feel, believe you? (How many TV detective plots have followed that theme!)

I've alluded to the question of reliability in Epistemology. One of the main contrasts in current debates is between Epistemologists who consider 'acquiring a belief through a reliable means' as sufficient for knowledge, provided that the belief is true, and those who require something stronger, say, the ability to defend your belief with persuasive reasons when challenged. The problem is, it's too easy to defeat a knowledge claim just by asking an innocent question (see my Answer to Demetreus). My own tentative view would be that we need to shift the focus away from the question of defining knowledge and onto the question why we are interested in identifying the 'one who knows' the answer to a particular question.

To make a factual statement, any statement, implies that one has the authority to speak. At any time, you can be legitimately challenged. But the inability to meet that challenge doesn't necessarily undermine your right to state your view. 'I just know,' can be a sufficient answer. Say, for example, when one is a very experienced golf caddy who just 'sees' that the number 5 iron would be too heavy for that shot, even though according to the book that's the correct iron to use. Trust your caddy, he does know.

At Oxford, I was lucky to have a term of supervision by P.F. Strawson for my B.Phil paper on Kant. In our conversations, it very quickly became clear that when Strawson told me, 'no, you are wrong', it was no use arguing. I was wrong. It wasn't arrogance on Strawson's part, just the voice of experience.

Strawson wasn't claiming to be right about everything. Just about some things. I don't do this too often (my students wouldn't let me). But the philosophical point is about authority. Authority is established, granted, defended, or challenged and defeated. Our interest in knowledge, as a concept, hinges on the question of authority: Whose authority do you trust on a particular topic? when do you accept a piece of advice or testimony and when do you reject it? This isn't about a definition of knowledge in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, but rather about the place of the concept of knowledge in the social matrix. The simplest example: 'How do you know?' 'I saw it with my own eyes.' End of discussion. This is how language (to use Michael Dummett's happy phrase) 'extends the range of human perception'. Your eyes become my eyes, through the authority which being a witness of the event in question grants you.

I'm coming up to my 60th birthday (next Monday, as it happens). Having been in philosophy for the best part of four decades there are one or two things that I know. In saying this, I hope you will believe me but the decision is yours. Judge me on my work. Right now, I am pursuing a line of investigation (in my other blog Hedgehog Philosopher) where feelings and hunches are playing a somewhat larger role than I would like. I know there's 'something there' which I can't articulate. In the past when I've had that feeling, it turned out to have substance, but not always. Down the years, I've been down many blind alleys, took many wrong turns and there's no saying for sure that I haven't taken a wrong turn this time. But, in the end, it is a matter of judgement and one has to trust one's judgement.

Good luck with your course, Sydney. Don't blindly accept authority, but don't become a boring sceptic either. Strive to find a balance, that way you will grow.

Degrees of agreement

2010-12-23T12:40:00.029Z

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 21:26:43
Len asked this question:

My question has to do with language and in that sense it could be a linguistics or a philosophy of language question. Of the two, I'm not really sure into which category it falls.

If you agree or disagree with a statement, it seems to me this is an absolute. However, on many psych tests employers use these days for candidates seeking to fill the open position, they give choices of 'agree,' 'strongly agree,' 'disagree' or 'strongly disagree. For example; if the the statement is 'The sky is blue,' I can either agree or disagree with the statement. How could I further agree or disagree about the state of the color of the sky or any other statement for that matter. If you and I both disagree, how could either of us disagree 'more' than the other? Herein lies my question:

How can you assign an adverbial quantifier to something that I believe is an absolute? I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who thinks this way so could tell me the difference between agree and strongly agree?

This is a fascinating question in the philosophy of language. Somewhere (I can't remember where) Michael Dummett raises the possibility of a speech act similar to assertion, where the speaker is less than fully confident about what they are saying. I think the term he used was 'probabilistic assertion', an idea he associated with Michael Polanyi. I remember long ago discussing this with my thesis supervisor John McDowell, who was roundly dismissive of Dummett's proposal.

Consider weather forecasts. People complain when the weather girl says, 'It will be fine tomorrow,' when she knows damn well that there is only a 70-80 per cent probability that it will be fine tomorrow. (I'm talking about BBC weather girls who've studied meteorology and actually know what they're talking about, on other TV stations they just read a script.) In the discussion I made the point that the context (a TV weather report) makes it clear that when the weather girl makes an assertion about tomorrow's weather, she isn't doing what we normally do when we make assertions. It isn't necessary for her to quote the probability figure, or express some degree of doubt about what she is telling us. It's understood.

But that's just the thin end of the wedge. (I think that this was McDowell's objection.) We would have to admit a whole family of speech acts, speculative assertion, tentative assertion, cautious assertion, confident assertion, emphatic assertion. And that just seems wrong. To make an assertion is to aim at truth. There are only two possibilities, you aim at truth or you aim to miss (i.e. you tell your audience a deliberate lie). It's understood that failure is a possibility. But you can't include a rider to that effect without destroying the whole point of this language game. Or, if not, then the rider adds nothing to what you've already said, the force and semantic content of your speech act.

However, my intuitions tell me that there is a point in the way these questionnaires are constructed, and the options they give. To extract this point, we need to do quite a bit of of work in a number of related areas: game theory, probability theory, the analysis of knowledge from testimony, as well as philosophy of language. Just to give a sense of the complexity involved, here's a short parable:

I am having a pleasant stroll in the hills around Athens with my three companions, Parmenides, Zeno and the young Socrates. Somehow, we've managed to get lost. I'm sure we passed that broken tree half an hour ago. We reach a point where the path forks three ways. 'Which we should we go?' I ask. Zeno scratches his chin. After what seems like an eternity he says, 'It's not right and it's not straight ahead, so I think it must be left.' 'No, no!' shouts the young Socrates waving his pointing finger enthusiastically, 'We have to go right, I'm sure of it!' Parmenides scowls. He stares straight ahead and nods. 'That is the way,' he says in a quiet tone.

Which way do you go?

I don't think that there's any doubt. I would follow Parmenides, I'd go straight ahead. Zeno isn't completely sure, so we can discount him. Socrates' wild gesticulations aren't convincing. Whereas Parmenides impresses us with his authority. He doesn't need to make a fuss about it. He knows.

There's a discussion of the connection between knowledge and authority in my Answer to Demetreus. If you think about it, there could not be a linguistic device which qualified a statement in a way which reliably gave the hearer information about the speaker's authority to make that statement, the credence one should place on it. And yet, we make these kinds of judgements all the time. The reason why we couldn't have such a device is that people aren't always the best authority on how credible an authority they are.

However, there is no objection in principle to introducing new devices into the language game, provided they have a use. Indeed, arguably, we already have such a device in the various ways and means available for conveying the strength with which you hold a belief or opinion. The finesse here is that the 'measure of strength' isn't like assertion, it doesn't function in the same way as a speech act, nor does it function as a qualifier of the speech act. It's information which you give out, more or less voluntary, of the same order (or at least closer to) the information you give out when your face blushes, or you tremble, or your features contort in anger. It is almost impossible to imagine what human life would be like if these features were absent.

When you tick the boxes (and I fully accept, sometimes it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense when you are asked whether you 'agree' or 'strongly agree' to a particular statement which is just plain true so far as you are concerned) you are giving out information which will be processed to yield a result. A numerical scheme is applied, somewhat like the various proposed preferential voting schemes for proportional representation. In a similar way to preferential voting, knowing this gives you some additional measure of control over how your application will be assessed. And the people who designed the form, know that you know this. In other words, you are being invited to participate in a game.

Here's just one example: Good psych tests (I mean, ones that are actually researched empirically, and constructed so you can't just 'cheat' your way to a better result) give you plenty of opportunity to contradict yourself. If you strongly agree to X and also strongly agree to Y, and the implicit assumptions behind X are inconsistent with the implicit assumptions behind Y, you earn a higher demerit than if one or other or both of your statements was less emphatic.

Your doubts justifiably reflect uncertainty about exactly what game you are being invited to play. Who designed the test and what is its real purpose? You are at a disadvantage because you don't know the rules. You don't know what numerical scheme will be applied. Or maybe — and this is potential source of criticism of this kind of exercise — you don't agree to this game at all. (That's what I feel about the new '0-5 star' system of appraisal introduced by eBay. If you're happy with the transaction, there ought to be only one choice, so far as I can see.)

However, if you are applying for a job, you don't really have the option. Honesty is, or ought to be, the best policy. But if it seems to you as if you are being required to be dishonest, give a false account of yourself, then maybe you should consider how badly you want the job.

Sophistry, wisdom and wonder

2010-12-15T10:55:00.017Z

On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 07:56:20
Kym asked this question:

Hi, my questions are:

1) why philosophy is not sophistry?

2) why philosophy is not wisdom?

3) why philosophy begins with wonder?

Thanks...

Having once described myself as an 'internet sophist' (see My Philosophical Life) you could say that I deserve this question. I am proud to belong to the tradition of Sophists, which includes the great figures of Thrasymachus, Protagoras, Prodicus and Gorgias. These were thinkers of stature who ventured out into the market place, as I have done, not to talk to anyone willing to listen like Socrates — a most unsuccessful Sophist if there ever was one — but rather on the understanding that their time was worth something, that they deserved recompense for their work. These contemporaries of Socrates and Plato were highly respected. The term 'sophist' had no negative connotations at that time. The closest translation would be 'professor'.

However, I accept the assumption of Kym's question: that there is an accepted sense of 'sophistry' (indeed, no-one these days would use the term any other way) which implies strong criticism and rebuke. To engage in sophistry is to use bad arguments deliberately to confuse your audience, in order to manipulate their beliefs. I hope that I have never done that, deliberately, or even as a result of carelessness or inattention. I share Socrates' passionate concern for the truth. Nor will I criticize his life style. There is nothing commendable about being wealthy. I make a living at what I do — working as an independent philosopher outside the Academy — but no more than I need for a very modest subsistence.

But pity poor Xanthippe. Pilloried by historians for being a fish wife, she had to live with the consequences of Socrates' decision to give up his well paid profession as a stone mason, choosing poverty and despising all comforts in order to follow his muse.

It was, above all, the founding of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum which put the final nail in the coffin of the honorable profession of Sophists. If you didn't belong to a school, then you didn't belong, period. To be a genuine 'philosopher' was to be recognized as such by other 'philosophers'. If you were not a member of the Philosophers' Party then by definition you were no lover of wisdom. That still holds true today, although universities are now under increasing pressure from the marketplace, as the recent scandal over the massive hike in UK university tuition fees has demonstrated. It is high time the university professors recognized that they no longer have the monopoly on excellence.

There are indeed signs that the prediction I made back in 1999 when I wrote my piece for The Glass House Philosopher was not so wide of the mark: 'The university departments have had their day. Time has come for a more democratic arrangement.' If I may venture a plug for my philosophy school, Pathways to Philosophy, you can do a highly acclaimed BA (Hons) degree in Philosophy from the University of London, with a higher standard of tutorial support from Pathways than any of the universities is able to provide (including Oxford and Cambridge with their long-established tutorial systems) for less than £5000 all in, for a complete four-year course, a fraction of what it would cost you if you applied as an internal student to the least 'expensive' university today. — And you don't have to give up your day job!

(I think I have earned the right to blow my trumpet now and then. After all, no-one pays me to do this blog.)

Well, what about wisdom. There are examples of great philosophers you could point to who were not very wise. Possibly the most catastrophic example from the 20th century would be Heidegger, whose flirtation with the Nazi regime (whatever gloss you place on it) cannot be justified or explained by any amount of sophistical reasoning. Bertrand Russell, rightly regarded as one of the most important figures in English-speaking philosophy and one of the founders of the tradition of philosophical analysis, was a serial womanizer, who alongside his brilliant views on logic and epistemology was prepared to entertain ideas on social reform which many today would consider opiniated and uninformed. Finally, there is Gottlob Frege, possibly the most important of all the founders of the analytic movement, about whom Michael Dummett in the Preface to his monumental first book Frege Philosophy of Language (1973) laments,

There is some irony for me in the fact that the man about whose philosophical views I have devoted, over years, a great deal of time to thinking, was, at least at the end of his life, a virulent racist, specifically an anti-semite. This fact is revealed by a fragment of a diary which survives among Frege's Nachlass, but which was not published with the rest by Professor Hans Hermes in Freges nachgelassene Schriften. The diary shows Frege to have been a man of extreme right-wing political opinions, bitterly opposed to the parliamentary system, democrats, liberals, Catholics, the French and, above all, Jews, who he thought ought to be deprived of political rights and, preferably, expelled from Germany. When I first read that diary, many years ago, I was deeply shocked, because I had revered Frege as an absolutely rational man...

Which just goes to show that the capacity for logical reasoning doesn't always go together with wisdom. That's not to say that we should take a sanguine view of philosophers who do not aspire to wisdom. There is a point in speaking of the 'love of wisdom', it's not just hot air or a mere political slogan. I view my own lapses from wisdom with regret, but it doesn't seem to me that my failings in that respect make me any less of a philosopher. One could have also pointed out that there are many persons whom one would consider wise, who have never ventured into philosophy. My old grandmother Rose was wise, though to my knowledge she had never read a word of philosophy. To put the point in terms of the language of logical analysis, being a philosopher is neither a sufficient condition for being wise, nor is being a philosopher a necessary condition for wisdom.

Finally, wonder. The motto on the web site for the International Society for Philosophers is 'Philosophy begins with wonder'. When I came to write this answer, I couldn't remember whether it was Plato or Aristotle who said this. Then I found this answer from Hawkinsian on Yahoo Answers:

Plato puts the following words in the mouth of Socrates at Theaetetus 155 d (tr. Benjamin Jowett): 'I see, my dear Theaetetus, that Theodorus had a true insight into your nature when he said that you were a philosopher, for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.'

Aristotle echoes the Theaetetus passage at 982b12 of his Metaphysics: 'It was their wonder, astonishment, that first led men to philosophize and still leads them.'

What many miss, however, is that Plato and Aristotle are both talking about the search for theoria, for a knowledge and understanding of the nature of the cosmos and our place in it, in a sense which today would include the great figures of science as well as those of philosophy. (I guess that Hawkinsian is a fan of Stephen Hawking.)

Another motto — which I penned for the PhiloSophos web site — is, 'Philosophy is for everyone and not just philosophers. Philosophers should know lots of things besides philosophy.' Philosophers should know about Hawking — and Dawkins and all the rest. Nor do you need any specialist academic training in philosophy to be a philosopher, to feel that special sense of wonder. That's why I said that philosophy is for all, and I meant it. But not everyone does feel that sense of wonder. My explanation would not be that the non-philosophical multitude lack sufficient knowledge or intelligence for philosophy. Rather, as the great Presocratic philosopher Heraclitus said, they are like people asleep. They sleepwalk through life, never once thinking of the Logos, the ultimate principle of all existence whatever that may be. The question never occurs to them. But it can occur to anybody.

I date the beginning of my interest in philosophy with that question. I have grappled with the question all my career, although, if the truth be told, there has been a long gap where my attempts to make progress with it had to go on the back burner (roughly, from the date when my book Naive Metaphysics appeared). Now I'm back on the case. If I may end this post with another plug, I've started another blog, Hedgehog Philosopher where my daily attempts to put the the jig-saw pieces together is recorded. I may never succeed. In fact, given the ambitiousness of the project, it is almost guaranteed in advance that I will not succeed. But while I remain engaged, I am filled with wonder, I am doing the thing that I do best. I can without blushing call myself a 'philosopher'.

Personal survival

2010-12-06T11:30:00.054Z

On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 14:49:46
Daisy asked this question:

What is necessary for personal survival?

I guess that Daisy isn't looking for an answer along the lines of, 'a compass, a pen knife, a torch, a box of matches, and a can of Mace.'

This is one half of a question which analytic philosophers call, 'the problem of personal identity.' I won't say whether this is the easier or more difficult half. The problem of personal identity concerns the necessary and sufficient conditions for the identity of person A at t1 with the (allegedly) same person A at t2. This isn't a question that arises in everyday conversation. However, there are particular circumstances where the issue of personal survival becomes urgent: Can a person be said to 'survive' if they suffer total amnesia? or in an advanced stage of Alzheimer's disease? or if they fall into a permanent coma?

Added to these relatively few practical challenges — which would hardly justify the vast industry of philosophers who've worked on the topic of personal identity — are all the resources of science fiction. One feels, and as an analytically trained philosopher I think this feeling is largely correct, that if you can't say whether a person 'survives' in this or that imaginary scenario, if you are puzzled and are not sure what to say, then there is an understanding which you lack — an understanding of what it is to be a person. Maybe in everyday life (modulo the medical cases) we can get by perfectly well without this understanding. But that's just part of the genius of philosophy: it poses questions you never thought to ask.

But once you see the question, you are gripped.

We will consider some of these problem scenarios in a minute. But actually I don't think this is all of it. There is a deeper question about survival and identity, which I considered in my book Naive Metaphysics. I reached the scary conclusion that there is no such thing as survival. The 'I' — the essential I — does not survive from one moment to the next:

[T]he subjective standpoint is a world every bit as rich and detailed as the world of the objective standpoint. Yet its reality hangs by the slenderest possible thread. It is real because I take it to be real, and only for so long as I take it to be real. By the slenderest possible thread the objective world is held at bay, yet no power in the universe can break that thread, so long as I exist. (Chapter 8, p.101)

Only something that continues through time can cease to exist. Yet my subjective world, as a reality constituted by its own appearance, only appears to continue; and that appearance itself is something which neither continues nor fails to continue. My subjective world can never die, can never cease to continue, for with every new moment it is as if it had never existed, and will continue no longer than that very moment. (Chapter 9, pp.119-20)

But let's get back to basics. One of the things I tell my students is, if you get stuck, try to think like a detective. Go back to the very beginning and don't assume anything. So I won't make any assumptions about what a 'person' is, or might be. Instead, I will list all the things, or kinds of thing, that might be necessary for personal survival. Here's the list:

Something physical
Something psychological
Information (e.g. pattern, structure)
Something metaphysical (whatever that means)
None of the above

As you see, I'm not leaving anything to chance. At this point, one can't imagine what might be covered by item 5. but you never know.

However, I will make this assumption: if a thought experiment or science fiction scenario inclines us to say that survival would, or would not have occurred, then that should be considered as a datum, so long as we are unable to find a compelling argument against that intuition.

1. Is something physical required — logically required — for personal survival? My intuitions tell me, no. It seems to me perfectly possible that (as in Anthony Quinton's much discussed thought experiment in his article 'Spaces and Times' Philosophy 37 1962: 130-4) I could wake up tomorrow morning on Planet X, and know who I was, in the absence of any evidence of something physical having made the journey from Earth to Planet X, or indeed evidence that Earth and Planet X were in the same universe.

2. Is something psychological required for personal survival? John Locke thought so. Indeed on Locke's account memory is not only necessary but also sufficient for personal identity. Locke's theory of personal identity appears to confirm the intuition expressed in the previous paragraph. What matters is consciousness of my own identity. The essential thing, when we praise, or punish, is that the person be aware that such praise or punishment is merited, which they cannot be in the absence of memory of what one did in the past.

I don't agree that this is an inviolable intuition, and as evidence for this I put forward the case of Cypher in The Matrix:

Cypher: I don't wanna remember nothing. Nothing, you understand? And I wanna be rich. You know, someone important … like an actor.

Agent Smith: Whatever you want, Mr. Reagan.

Cypher bitterly regrets his decision to take the red pill. He's sick and tired of 'reality'. He feels duped by Morpheus. What's interesting about this is that the scriptwriters evidently thought (and I agree with their intuition) that it is reasonable that someone might wish to have a total memory wipe. I wouldn't, but some would. From Cypher's perspective, this isn't death, not at all. He will be the famous actor, feasting on juicy digital steaks, living a life of ease and luxury. He will survive, even though the famous actor has no memory of Cypher's present existence. (I can't help wondering if the name chosen for this character, 'Cypher', isn't a sly joke on the part of the scriptwriters.)

3. It would not be an unreasonable inference from 1. and 2. that what is necessary for personal survival is either something physical (as in Cypher's case) or something mental (as in Quinton's thought experiment). Analytic philosophers don't like such 'disjunctive' answers. When you ask for necessary or sufficient conditions, a disjunctive, 'either-or' answer just sounds like equivocation. Either we're talking about 'physical survival' or we're talking about 'mental survival'. But that would be missing the point. In the case of the necessary conditions for personal identity, there is just one thing we are interested in: survival of what matters.

There is a way around this, however. One could say that 'what matters' is the continuity of information, a certain unique structure or pattern that can be carried either in a physical or a mental medium, or both. However, this is not a view that is universally held. While the idea of reincarnation or rebirth appears to require continuity of some aspect of the consciousness of the person who dies, there is no agreement amongst different schools (e.g. of Hinduism or Buddhism) on what exactly that aspect is. There appear to be some who have argued that what survives is the sheer point of view as such, distinct from all psychological attributes or contents of consciousness. That's how I understand the notion of an individual 'atman'.

I think this is sufficient to warrant a 'pass' on the question of transmission of information, as necessary for personal survival. To massage this intuition, one might envisage a combination of the Quinton and Cypher thought experiments. Imagine that Cypher wakes up on Planet X and spends a few years there, where his existence is totally miserable. Then Agent Smith offers him a splendid life on Planet Y, where all his memories of Planet X will be wiped.

4. At this point you will be champing at the bit to argue that in our new thought experiment, Cypher must believe that what he is essentially is an 'atman', a sheer point of view, which exists now on Planet X and will exist on Planet Y, even though nothing physical or psychological survives.

My response is, believe this if you like. It just doesn't make any sense to me. I lose the thread at this point. But I can't rule the possibility out because I just don't know what I'd be ruling out. It's an 'unknown unknown'. I have the feeling, though, that if Daisy gives this as her answer (I'm assuming, Daisy, that you have an assignment to write) she won't be very popular. Perhaps a better line would be to argue for an aporetic conclusion, as I have done. We've tried all the alternatives and none of them work, end of essay.

5. By now, you may have guessed where this is heading. We've tried all the alternatives and none of them is satisfactory. I'm happy to accept that not everyone will agree with me about this. At any rate, I'm not satisfied. 'Person' is a concept with a valid use within our linguistic community, our moral, legal and political practice. The philosopher's 'problem cases' aren't really problems. But they are to the philosopher.

Then again, if you are looking at the concept of a person from a philosophical standpoint, it is arguable that we put far too much emphasis on identity (see Derek Parfit's acclaimed book Reasons and Persons, 1984). However, I think Parfit overstates the case. I wouldn't like to live in his preference utilitarian utopia where the notion of being a person, or of personal identity or integrity is no longer considered 'important'.

We need to look again at the question of 'what matters'. When you consider the sufficient conditions for personal identity (something I haven't done here), it becomes apparent (as some philosophers have argued, e.g. David Lewis) that the best theories we have allow for multiple survival. E.g. I go to sleep, and two — or a hundred and two — GKs wake up, each individual version of GK fully satisfying the criteria for personal identity, according to our best theory. In this kind of scenario, our intuitions go AWOL. We don't' know what to say. We feel drawn to insist on something 'metaphysical' (such as a Cartesian soul substance, or Buddhist atman) which exists in one, and only one of the GKs, but common sense and logic tell us that there simply is no foothold here for picking out one of the GKs from the multitude in order to bestow this special honour.

So what really matters? I don't know about you, but I want to know is what it is by virtue of which it is true that I am GK (Thomas Nagel's 'I am TN'). That's what matters. The fact that I am here, that there is a world for me, when it is perfectly conceivable (as I would argue, you may disagree) that the world might have been exactly as it is now, in the absence of I. In other words, the existence of my subjective world is a contingency which depends on nothing at all. It's just a brute fact, evident to me now as anything can be, and yet nothing in my knowledge or experience justifies or accounts for the existence of my subjective world one single moment from now.

I realize that many will regard this conclusion as fantastical. I — the essential or ultimate 'I', the thing that matters — do not survive. I will not survive to see this blog post finished. Not even to see the next sentence that GK will write. I remember once my old Prof David Hamlyn (who did a writeup for my book) commenting in a letter that he sometimes worried that I took Plato's advice to 'follow the argument wherever it may lead' beyond the point that most would consider reasonable. I don't have a reply to Hamlyn, except to say, 'that's just me, innit?'

Morpheus and the inverted world

2010-12-01T10:44:00.037Z

On Tues, Nov 30, 2010 at 00:22:33
Courtney asked:

A man named Morpheus approaches you on the street and tells you that the world is not real. Specifically, he makes the claim that you are plugged into a machine, and the world that you believe to be real is nothing but a computer simulation. He then challenges you to prove him wrong. With reference to Descartes, make an argument that either agrees or disagrees with his position. After establishing your Descartes based position on the external world, argue against the opposite one. Make sure not to take any red or blue pills until you do!

This is a typical philosophy instructor's question, and I reckon from the language an American philosophy instructor. The last sentence suggests female rather than male. I can't say exactly why it does, it just does. But that's mere guessing. I'm not being responsible in making this assertion. Descartes would say, I am willfully abusing my God-given powers of judgement. The truth is, I don't know and wouldn't know even if by pure luck my guess turned out to be correct.

But I'm jumping ahead. In Meditation 1, where Descartes considers the possibility that he is being deceived by an all-powerful evil demon, the fear is that exercising one's judgement responsibly is no more likely to arrive at the truth than wild guessing. The corrosive world-destroying doubt only ends when Descartes succeeds in convincing himself that God exists and is not a deceiver. God wouldn't give me ample evidence for the existence of an external world when no such world exists.

But that doesn't mean we can't make false judgements. The best we can do, in the face of the ever-present possibility of empirical error is to remind ourselves that we have made errors in the past and keep our eyes open for new evidence that overturns what we previously believed. That's part of what it means to exercise one's judgement responsibly.

In Meditation 6, Descartes goes further and explains in considerable detail how it is that illusions and misperceptions arise. Our perceptual powers such as sight and hearing, our ability to sense when we have suffered an injury, depend on physical processes which God has designed to lead us to truth. But even the best, most optimal design doesn't guarantee that we will always attain the truth. The very same laws of nature which lead us to knowledge can also lead us into error.

So what would Descartes say about the Matrix scenario? It's possible. It could happen in reality — if we grant the hypothesis that human beings will one day create artificial intelligence. Of course, Descartes would disagree on this particular point: he believed that intelligence requires a non-physical soul. Non-human animals are just machines, he thought, like the clockwork birds twittering in cages that amused the idle rich. But that detail is easy enough to fix. We can change the Matrix story to one where an evil angel, with finite not infinite powers, puts us asleep and makes us dream of a world of 2010.

Would God allow this? Why not? There are evil angels (Satan and his host) whom God could destroy if He wanted to, but out of his infinite wisdom and benevolence chooses not to. The point is that, even while dreaming, we are not deceived into thinking that an external world exists. We are physical objects existing in space, even while asleep. Even though we are deceived, there remains the possibility of discovering the deception, provided we exercise our judgement responsibly. That's what Neo does in the Matrix when he concludes (rightly, as we the audience know) that after he is 'woken up' in a pod with tubes attached to his back, this was his first taste of reality, and not just the beginning of a science fiction nightmare.

So in answer to the instructor's question, nothing Descartes says in the Meditations proves that Morpheus is wrong.

I'm going to take a bit of a jump now. Actually, it's a huge leap, but you'll see the point in a minute. In my post a couple of weeks back on what a philosopher might think about I confessed that 'Like Neo in The Matrix, I know there is 'something wrong with the world'.' Something tells me that this isn't real. I don't mean that I am not awake, at home (because the heavy snow made it impossible to get into my office today), writing a post for my Tentative Answers blog. I've no doubts about that. I mean something deeper, not just 'more of the same' which is all you discover if you take the red pill.

Hegel thought about this. In one of the most difficult passages in his Phenomenology of Spirit (a text which I've struggled with and never mastered), he turns the tables on every attempt at drawing a distinction between 'the apparent world' and 'the real world' — a project which traces back to the earliest Greek Philosophers Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes. The final, most sophisticated version of this story is Kant's distinction between the phenomena and noumena, or the 'world of appearances' and 'things in themselves'.

The passage in question is entitled, cryptically, 'The Inverted World'. (I apologize to Hegel scholars in advance, because I don't have the text in front of me.)

Why an 'inverted world'? Hegel considers the idea of a reality 'behind' the world of appearances. This world is 'different', indeed radically different. The extravagant idea that everything in this other world is the 'inversion' of what it is in this world is meant to be a metaphor. Scientific inquiry is all about this world, the world of appearances, just as Kant believed. Yet there must be something more, Kant thought, than just the world of science: the ultimate reality, which we can never know or comprehend because our knowledge is limited to the world of our possible experience.

Now you can say (with Wittgenstein) that 'a nothing will serve as well as a something about which nothing can be said'. But Hegel goes further, and that's what makes this passage so brilliant. He gets right into the brain of someone who believes, wants there to be something more. Yet all we know about this 'something' is its sheer 'difference'. The inverted world is opposite to all we know. What does that mean? Nothing, says Hegel! We are deceiving ourselves with a picture (as Wittgenstein would have remarked).

In Hegel's metaphysics, no 'ultimate reality' is revealed, or posited, because the Absolute is none other than this world, seen aright. Seen aright, the world has an irreducibly teleological structure by virtue of which we can construct a suitable object for religious awe, even though God or Christ in a Hegelian universe is a different entity from anything the non-philosophical believer would recognize. From the perspective of the Absolute, the meaning of human history is finally revealed. This is it, there is nothing else.

Are you still with me?

In the 20th century, arguably the two seminal philosophical texts in Metaphysics are Heidegger's Being and Time and Whitehead's Process and Reality. Right at the beginning of their respective works, these philosophers nail their colours to the mast. According to Heidegger, what phenomenological ontology seeks to reveal is (as I would put it) the 'wood we fail to see for the trees', the ontological structure of appearances. According to Whitehead, the task of the philosopher is to 'frame the best set of categories that we can', categories which apply to the world of our experience, more general than the categories of physics because they depend on only the most general features of experience. In Whitehead's memorable metaphor, we don't notice the elephant which is always present.

(It goes without saying that both philosophers owe a massive debt to Hegel.)

Now I remember that that was the topic of my very first post, August 1009 The elephant in the room...

Funny that I seem to have gone full circle. Have I made any progress? I see through myself. I have nothing to offer, nothing to contribute to the academic debate. Nothing hidden away in some dark corner of my mind. I won't wake up tomorrow and 'remember' the truth. And, supposing I did, it would just be more of the same. Whatever it is I want, whatever it is I'm looking for, I can't even give a name to. (It sure ain't religion, so don't even think of going there. Read my other posts.) All I know for sure is that Heidegger and Whitehead are old hat. — Nor even Emmanuel Levinas author of Totality and Infinity which some philosophers would rate even higher, whom I once thought was the veritable bees knees.

The elephant is sitting right next to me. Staring at me. Chuckling silently as I scramble through every possible permutation. Logic isn't enough!

But you know what? I don't give up that easily. So what if I took the red pill and nothing happened. That just goes to show that you shouldn't rely on pills.

Choosing your own reality

2010-11-25T11:05:00.030Z

On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 23:02:04
Ruth asked this question:

(I apologise for asking such a basic question, but I have googled and googled and... nothing.)

I was reading a discussion online the other day and one of the participants posited that 'all experience essentially takes place in the mind'. My question is, if there is no such thing as 'objective' reality, are people altered by the things they experience and change because of outside stimulus, or do they 'change' the things they experience to suit their own framework? Which choice is preferable?

At first glance, Ruth's question looks like a question about idealism. But I don't think it is. The idealist doesn't say that 'there is no such thing as 'objective' reality'. On the contrary, Berkeley's immaterialism, Kant's transcendental idealism, or Hegel's objective idealism are all theories about the nature of objective reality. In these theories, mind plays an important role, but it is not your mind or my mind but Mind (with a capital 'M').

It is fair to say that the current philosophical climate is predominantly realist rather than idealist. Yet even the staunchest realist would agree that our point of view is not the 'View from Nowhere' as Nagel terms it (Thomas Nagel The View From Nowhere 1986). The way we gain knowledge about the world outside us, our ability to access the 'objective' facts, depends on many factors including our mental constitution, sensory capacities, concepts and linguistic resources. Human beings differ from one another in this respect, although there is a also sense in which there exists a specifically 'human way' of perceiving and gaining knowledge of the world, by contrast, e.g., with that of a whale or a bat.

So in response to the question, 'Do we change because of outside stimulus, or do we 'change' the things we experience to suit our own framework?' my answer is, both.

I am writing this tentative answer today because when I checked my 'Questions In' mailbox I found Ruth's question there. If there hadn't been a question that interested me, I might have been doing something else. When Ruth clicked the button at Ask a Philosopher to submit her query, that action in a small way changed the course of my life.

Yet it is also true that the things I experience, the way the world impresses itself on me and stimulates me to action, depends on my desires, attitudes, moods. By working on myself, by reflecting on the way I feel and think, I effectively change my world. The world is the world, the same world for all of us; but I can choose where to live in that world, my intellectual habitation — be it high or low, austere or lush. In a very real sense, it is up to me to create my own reality.

Which choice is preferable? How do you choose when to open yourself up and let the world impress itself on you, and when to work on yourself in order to make the world — or your world — different? That's a fair question. Each person, I would argue, differs in this respect. It is a particularly tricky question for the philosopher.

As a seeker after truth, my aim is or ought to be to make my subjective contribution as small as possible so that I can accurately reflect the nature of objective reality. It isn't up to my free choice whether to be a materialist, or a dualist, a realist or idealist. I have to let the arguments impress themselves upon me, and then decide. I am nothing and reality is everything. That attitude is often taken as definitive of the 'philosophical standpoint'.

And yet, truth seeking would be a pointless exercise, if it were not part of a strenuous effort to make sense of things. It's not as if any 'truths' will do. A philosopher is only concerned with ultimate or universal truths, truths which would remain true even if the actual world as we find it was different in so many different ways. But that's still too many. My world is meaningful, or meaningless, depending on choices I make, for example, choices about which truths to focus upon, which questions to live with.

As regards 'how to live' in a practical sense, there don't seem to be many choices open to me, given my resources and ongoing commitments, my place in society. And yet as regards making sense of things intellectually, all the work is yet to be done. As I remarked last time, the world seems to me like a puzzle that doesn't add up. That impression, that feeling: is it an accurate reflection of reality, or is it rather the reality I have merely chosen to inhabit?

It feels like a choice. I have chosen to be gripped by a question which, if the reactions of students, colleagues, friends are anything to go by, not many people nor even many academic philosophers find puzzling. I don't have to spend all my time thinking about it. I don't have to slip into this mood. But I do, because that is what I will.

I don't find much comfort in the thought that the thoughts I am thinking now are merely the product of two and a half thousand years of the history of philosophy. That somehow I am merely 'continuing a tradition'. The past is the past, water under the bridge. It's true that 'those ignorant of the history of philosophy are doomed to repeat it' (as I often tell my students). After nearly 40 years doing this, I think I know enough about the history of philosophy to get by. (Not nearly as much as the late Anthony Harrison-Barbet, author of Philosophical Connections but I doubt whether many working academic philosophers do.)

I said last time that 'to hold the entire universe 'in question' seems liberating, in a strange sort of way'. Why do I need to be liberated? liberated from what? The idea that philosophy has its 'consolations' is as old as Boethius, or older, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I chose philosophy all those years ago because I needed it, because it seemed to be the only way I could stop my world from falling apart. And it's done a pretty good job ever since.

Some will sense that the G-word is in the background to all of this. The theist says, 'Of course the world has a purpose, the purpose given to it by God.' My response: If it turned out that God did exist (don't ask me how we would know), it would be our duty to kill him, or her (don't ask me how we would achieve this). If it turned out that God didn't exist (don't ask etc.), it would be our duty to create him, or her (don't ask etc.).

This isn't some mad idea; better minds have been here before me. But I'm not really interested in the God question, I see through all these facile moves. This isn't where the answer is going to be found. (Like philosophy, religion is a life choice. I just don't think that it is a very good choice, but I'm here speaking for myself not for you.)

So, in my own mind, I have found something better than religion. I've spent two thirds of a lifetime creating my world, and the job is not done yet. When it is, I'll let you know.

If the sun refused to shine,
I don't mind, I don't mind.
If the mountains fell in the sea,
Let it be, it ain't me.
Got my own world to live through
And I ain't gonna copy you.

Jimi Hendrix 'If 6 was 9'

What a philosopher might think about

2010-11-19T12:33:00.026Z

On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 17:18:39
Ottis asked this question:

What is something a philosopher might think about?

I normally avoid this kind of vague question which invites you to write about just about anything you like. Unfortunately, this week the selection of questions submitted to Ask a Philosopher was so uninspiring that I'm actually glad to find a question which invites me to write about anything I like.

What do philosophers think about? The standard response is to toss out a few examples, showing why these illustrate the nature of philosophical problems or questions, or the techniques or methods used by the philosopher in answering them. But that's boring. In any case, it wouldn't be true. At least, not about myself. I don't spend my time thinking about 'the problems of philosophy'. My students do this, and in my letters to my students I criticize their efforts and offer guidance. Of course, this involves thinking about those questions, but that's become second nature. I don't think about it, I just do it.

What I think about, what occupies every spare minute of my day, wherever I happen to be and whatever I happen to be doing, is something entirely different, something you won't find in the average introduction to philosophy. If you asked me, what it is that 'makes me a philosopher' it would be this, and not what I do in my day job.

What I think about is The Question. There is only one. Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy humorously puts the case that the joke is on philosophers for being so dumb as to believe that there could be just one question. ('The answer is 42. What did you expect?!') But on a closer reading, I see something that isn't a joke at all.

The Question isn't, 'Life, the Universe and Everything'. That's just a dummy phrase, a placeholder, for whatever-it-is that philosophers think about, ultimately think about, as part of the very essence of being a philosopher. The meaning of it all. Except, you can't just talk about 'meaning' as if you knew what that meant, or even 'it all' as if you what is involved in a universal generalization which isn't restricted to any particular subject matter or domain, just 'everything'.

I wrote my book Naive Metaphysics about this. Well, not exactly this, but about one component of the Question, namely What It Is that we ask the Question about. My answer is that there are two things, not one. 'A theory of subjective and objective worlds'. However you pose it, you have to ask the Question twice.

In the very first paragraph of Chapter One (which I'm sorry to say many readers don't get past) I give an argument for the impossibility of asking the Question, or at least, of interpreting it as a 'why' question:

Logically, the world ought not to exist. — Brute fact is an affront to human reason, which always seeks the sufficient ground for every contingent given. Yet neither can reason be persuaded to accept (pace Spinoza, Leibniz) that it is necessary that our little planet Earth should have come into being. Or that I should be writing this. Or that the Holocaust happened. Fortunately, as finite beings, we are never brought to the point of having to make that impossible choice. The chain from consequences to grounds is (as Kant observed) never-ending. However, a contradiction that will never have to be faced is still a contradiction. Between logical contingency and logical necessity there is no third modality: either our world is or is not the only logically possible world. If it cannot be either, then it cannot be.

Logically, the world ought not to exist! 'Well, so much logic,' you might be thinking. But you'd be dead wrong. There is no thinking without logic, only the babbling of an infant.

What is all this about? Ignore the allusions to Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant. That's for students of philosophy to dabble into. (Clue: the Kantian reference is to his 'Antinomies of Pure Reason' in the Critique of Pure Reason.)

What I'm saying is that the world, or universe, cannot be 'necessary' and it cannot be 'contingent'. Either alternative is unacceptable, an affront to sense and logic. I could just have easily argued that the universe cannot be 'rational' and it cannot be 'irrational'; that it cannot be 'meaningful' and it cannot be 'meaningless'; that it cannot 'have a purpose' and it cannot 'lack a purpose'.

Investigate this for yourself. 99.99 per cent of all the discussions of the Question in all its guises, on all the internet forums, take the form of rebounding endlessly between the two alternatives. Much of the history of philosophy is the same. Every 'new' answer, every tweak or dodge, is just a variation on what went before. You go for one side, or you go for the other, or you invent some clever reason for taking a position somewhere in the middle (philosophers love to 'reconcile contradictions').

I don't have an answer, or even a clue how to go forward. If you think you'd like to discover that the universe had a purpose, say, just imagine how you'd feel if you didn't like that purpose. Tough titty. The purpose is the purpose, willy nilly, and what you think is totally irrelevant. Or imagine that you discover, finally, that the universe really doesn't have a purpose. You can do whatever you like, life has whatever purpose you give it. Really? Is that your final answer? Are you happy with that?

I could roll off a list of philosophers who claimed to be happy with that answer (starting with Nietzsche, maybe) but I strongly suspect — no, I know that they only said that, only defended that view because of the unacceptability of the alternative. Logic again. If it can't be P then it must be not-P.

Let's just assume that both alternatives are false. (The example is about purpose but pick your favourite concept.) How could that be possible? Here are some more or less familiar strategies:

1. Overcoming the contradiction in a synthesis. Hegel is simply following old logic here, not inventing a new kind of logic (so-called 'dialectical logic'). If the contradiction is 'overcome', that is to say, if both alternatives are false, then that merely shows that the 'contradiction' so-called wasn't really a contradiction. The contradictories were merely contraries. In other words, Hegel is merely generalizing on Kant's strategy in the Antinomies.

2. Denying duality. The 'alternatives' so-called aren't really alternatives at all. They are merely different aspects of one and the same thing. Spinoza argued, against Descartes, that there is no 'mental substance' interacting with 'material substance', rather, there is only God and his mental and material 'modes'. So with regard to purpose you might try to have your cake and eat it: the universe is purposefully purposeless, or maybe purposelessly purposeful. There's no choice to make because it's all one and the same in the end. But that's just a transparent dodge. There's no problem if the contradictories apply in different 'senses' or 'respects', or from different 'points of view'.

3. Challenging logic. I like this one because I tried it in Naive Metaphysics. So what if the objective standpoint and the subjective standpoint contradict one another? In that case, here's one example (there could be more!) of a contradiction which isn't false. Problem is, I've been stuck at this point for the last 20 or so years. Meanwhile, my mental capacity isn't going to undergo any miraculous increase. I've got to make do with what I've got, which doesn't seem a lot these days.

Why bother? Why keep worrying at a question (sorry, Question) which you know, or at least are pretty sure you will never be able to answer? I don't have the answer to that one. To hold the entire universe 'in question' seems liberating, in a strange sort of way. Like Neo in The Matrix, I know there is 'something wrong with the world'. — What a great movie that would be if only the answer wasn't so banal!

How to prove your free will

2010-11-05T13:20:00.023Z

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 20:57:22
Alan asked this question:

Do we have free will?

Just before I typed this, I toyed with the idea of not submitting the question. Then I decided to submit the question although it seems that I could effortlessly have decided not to submit the question. This seems to be a process of me doing the deciding. Is it not meaningless to say that it is just an illusion that I have a voluntary choice of whether or not to submit this question when it feels so real that I have this choice?

I have a similar story to Alan's. It being a Friday afternoon, with the prospect of a weekend of relaxation and enjoyment ahead of me, there are several items on my list of things that I had meant to get done this week — which have still not been done — and my Tentative Answer is just one of them. And it's not necessarily the most urgent, either. However, all things considered, having done enough this week to keep the good ship Pathways afloat, having not disappointed too many people, I feel I'm justified in doing what I would most enjoy from my task list and leave the rest until next week.

Some people would hardly bother to go through this rigmarole of deliberation. Others would not consider their feelings of enjoyment to be a relevant consideration, but would just plough ahead do the most important task whether they enjoyed it or not. I'm somewhere in the middle. Anyone who knew me well enough would be able to predict my decision. It's not that I always take the easiest or most enjoyable option; only sometimes. But you can bet that if there's any time I'm likely to do this it will be on a Friday afternoon.

Well, Alan's case on the face of it is slightly different. He claims that his decision was made 'effortlessly' by which I take it he means that there was no particular reason to submit the question or not submit the question. He could just as easily have not submitted it. Problem is, if he hadn't submitted it, we wouldn't be able to give him an answer. My grandmother used to say, 'If you're lucky, you can win the lottery without filling in the coupon.' But Ask a Philosopher doesn't work that way. We're not mind readers.

I know what Alan means. What he means is something that we find ourselves doing when we first consider the idea of free will. We want to prove it to ourselves, by doing something — freely. But what exactly does that entail?

This is familiar territory in philosophical discussions of freedom of the will. The default view, which you will find defended by many philosophers from David Hume onwards, is that an action is free provided that it is done from our own choice, not under duress and in full possession of our mental faculties. This view is known as 'compatibilism' — defined in this way, freedom of the will is fully compatible with determinism.

This won't satisfy Alan (and it doesn't fully satisfy me either) because this kind of 'freedom' hardly looks the kind of thing that we would want or be satisfied with. We want more. We don't want there to be a story about causes and effects that ultimately explains every action that we do. We want the action to come from us not from the world grinding on, doing its thing.

Confusingly, however, we also want it to be the case that when we do good, not only do we receive praise but also recognition that the action in question was to be expected, given our character. If the action is praiseworthy, it's an insult if someone says, 'I'm surprised you did that!'

But aren't we all part of the world? If I have the sort of character which would lead me to do something praiseworthy, or blameworthy, is that not a fact about the world? In that case, where does my 'process of deciding' fit in, if not as a process taking place in an entity situated at a place and time, following its nature or character?

There is something wrong with the statement I have just made; and it's wrongness was pointed out by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. There is something that happens, at the moment of making a decision, that cannot be fully accounted for in terms of any amount of knowledge of one's character or predispositions. Every situation is unique. It doesn't matter if you have been here a thousand times before. You still have the opportunity to confound those who would predict your action. In this respect, it is wrong to see human beings as merely 'part of nature'. There is something added to the equation every time you decide, regardless of what other people expect, or even what you expect from yourself.

But how to prove this?

I've thought a lot about our meeting, Mr. Hofman.
Since the beginning, I felt the need to see you.
When you left the cafe,
I realized I couldn't wait any longer.
What you said on television persuaded me.
I gathered the courage you spoke of.
You can kill me.
I acknowledge your right to do so.
I'll take the risk.
But I'm banking on your curiosity.
You want to know what happened to Miss Saskia.

When I was 16, I discovered something.
Everyone has those thoughts, but no one ever jumps.
I told myself: 'Imagine you're jumping.'
Is it predestined that I won't jump?
How can it be predestined that I won't?
So, to go against what is predestined, one must jump.
I jumped.
The fall was a holy event.
I broke my left arm and lost 2 fingers. Why did I jump?
A slight abnormality in my personality,
imperceptible to those around me.
You can find me listed in the medical encyclopedias
under 'Sociopath' in the new editions.

The Vanishing 1988 (Dutch: Spoorlos)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096163/

What did Raymond Lemorne, Saskia's abductor, think he had proved all those years ago by jumping off the wall? There was a very good reason for not jumping off the wall — it's sheer height from the ground, the consequent risk of injury — but he also had a very good reason for jumping: to prove a point.

If Alan had wanted to 'prove' his free will, wouldn't it have been better to choose something he had a strong reason not to do, but do it nonetheless, in spite of his character and circumstances, in spite of himself? Lemorne gives the lie to that conceit. He knows what he is: a sociopath. And it's not as if you could just choose something trivial to prove the thesis. I could go home now, leave this post unfinished, leave my computers on (much to the annoyance of my office landlord) but I won't, because even if I did, it would prove nothing.

If you can't prove your free will by doing something predictable, you can't prove it by doing something unpredictable either.

But do I have to prove it? Don't I just know? As Alan states, it's 'meaningless' to assert that free will is an illusion when it 'feels so real'.

Isn't Alan just being a good empiricist here? How else do we find out about the world and about reality but from our experience? And some things just can't be meaningfully doubted. At the end of the day, you have to go along with your best take on how things seem, the best explanation. And how things seem, in the case of human action, is that actions come from us, not from the world. It's called 'saving the phenomena.'

I'm not going to dispute the claim about explanation. It could be argued that the whole purpose of seeking explanations is that we dig below the surface. Sometimes explanations can be counter-intuitive or paradoxical, yet we know them to be better than the explanations that seem easier to accept, because they take more into consideration. However, in the case of free will it's a moot point. As soon as you leave the perspective of the agent, in your attempt to 'take more into consideration' you lose the very thing you were trying to focus on.

My objection is different. To call something an 'illusion' implies that you grasp the difference between how things appear in respect of the entity in question, and how things are in reality. I know what it means to say that it is an illusion that a straight stick partially immersed in water appears bent, because I grasp the difference between what it is for a stick to be straight and what it is for a stick to be bent. If is an 'illusion' that I am freely deciding what to type next, then this is a claim about how things appear to me, at this moment. But that implies the possibility of there being some other way of seeing those same events. You immerse the stick in water, or you remove it. But there is no corresponding alternative in the case of human action.

Thomas Nagel in The View From Nowhere (1986) refers to this as the 'necessary penumbra of ignorance' of the causes of those events we regard as our actions.

In short, I don't know what I would be denying if I denied that free will is an illusion. I don't have any conception of 'how things might be otherwise'. Therein lies a possible solution to the free will problem. We think we know 'what we want', but the very attempt to state what we 'want' from freedom of the will falls into confusion.

Ethics and advertising

2010-10-27T12:25:00.021+01:00

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 09:11:03
Emmanuel asked this question:

Dr I am Emmanuel a student at a university pursuing a Bachelors in Business Administration. I need your assistance on some questions such as:

Provide philosophical arguments to the ethical questions which arise when considering modern advertising techniques:

1. What responsibility, if any, does a company have for honestly educating the consumer about its product?

2. Should advertisers be allowed to suggest that a product will make a person more sexy/ interesting/ beautiful/ successful etc?

3. Is it ethical to use celebrities to sell products they probably don’t even use themselves?

4. Is it the buyer’s responsibility to be aware of these strategies and not allow adverts to manipulate their emotions?

This question was sent as a personal email rather than submitted to Ask a Philosopher. I'm guessing that Emmanuel found my article Ethics and Advertising. I don't give private advice because that's too close to helping students cheat with their homework. All answers to questions submitted to Ask a Philosopher are published on the internet.

These are very good questions, which you won't find the answers to in my article. I was more concerned to set limits to what ethics can reasonably demand from advertisers, rather than put forward specific principles governing the ethics of advertising. However, it seems to me that the questions Emmanuel raises don't require any special expertise in business ethics. They are a matter of plain common sense.

What responsibility, if any, does a company have for honestly educating the consumer about its product? Let's imagine a case where you are marketing a very nice product, which has some features not found in any of the competing products in the marketplace. You go to an advertising agency, who discuss your 'unique selling point' (USP), and possible ways of presenting this in TV adverts, billboard advertising etc.

However, you know, and your advertising agency knows that there is a better product available from a rival company. You've done extensive secret testing and their product beats yours every time. Yes, your product has features the rival product doesn't have, but that is more than offset by the fact that these features are mostly eye candy and not very useful. Is it unethical to tell consumers that yours is the best available?

I am told that in Germany it is actually against the law to state in an advert that your product is the best unless you can prove that it is. Elsewhere, such as the UK where the rules are a bit more relaxed, saying that a product is 'the best' isn't considered as potentially misleading information. Whereas if you say that your toilet cleaner kills 99% of germs when it only kills 75% then you are breaking the Trade Descriptions Act.

'We think it's the best,' is a way of saying, 'We believe in our product, we stand behind it.' To me, that is a perfectly reasonable attitude.

Do you have an ethical obligation to tell your potential customers that the rival product is better, according to your own tests? Absolutely not. You are ethically (and in many cases legally) obliged to ensure that your product is fit for purpose, not dangerous to use, and not misleadingly described. On the other hand, a sufficiently resourceful and creative advertising agency can make the most of the fact that you are not the leading brand. 'We're Number Two But We Try Harder,' was the famous Avis advert which won them an increased slice of the car hire market against their leading rivals, Herz.

I would love to see an advert which said, 'Product X is Better But Ours Has More Eye Candy!'

Should advertisers be allowed to suggest that a product will make a person more sexy/ interesting/ beautiful/ successful etc? My answer to this would be, Yes, if it's true. If the product in question really does make you more sexy, for example, then you have every right to tell consumers that it does.

But how could this be measured? 'In a survey of a randomly chosen sample of consumers, users of laptop A were considered more sexy than users of laptop B.' Well, an advertiser would never say this, just like that. But they would imply it. The finesse here (as I argue in Ethics and Advertising) is to realize that the advertising campaign in itself can give the product the power to make you more feel, or appear sexy. The money invested in the campaign adds to the value of the product, not by making it more useful, but by making the users of the product feel or appear more sexy, or cool, or whatever.

I suspect that behind this question is a puritanical attitude that hates the glitz and the glamour of today's marketplace. A car is just a useful machine from getting you from A to B. A laptop is just a useful device for sending emails and browsing the internet. As if!

I know that there will be some who are unsatisfied with my defence of the glitz and glamour. Do we really want to live in a tinsel world far removed from reality? — How close to reality do you want to be? I don't want my face rubbed in the dirt. Don't take away my dreams, the world can be a hard place. But I understand that there's a happy medium. Use value is an important consideration, of course it is. Just don't get puritanical on me.

Is it ethical to use celebrities to sell products they probably don’t even use themselves? This is a sneaky question, because of the use of the qualifier 'probably'. We have to look at two different cases:

The first case is where a celebrity states that they use a product, and that they like it and they endorse it. If they are lying, if they don't use the product, then that is unethical, because it is unethical to lie. There's no argument here. However, in the real world things are not quite so black and white. Consider the immensely lucrative field of sports endorsements. A leading tennis player uses Wilson tennis rackets. But this isn't a Wilson that they purchased in a local store. The racket has been finely adjusted and tweaked. To buy something like that in a shop would cost you thousands. But surely you'd have to be an idiot to think that you could win Wimbledon with a racket you got from the local sports shop!

The second case is where celebrities appear in adverts but don't explicitly endorse the product. Rather, the product gains glamour through the association. Here, again, I think that most viewers of the advert are not taken in. Having said that, you have to consider things from the point of view of the celebrity. Would you, a famous film actor for example, appear in an advert for a product that you considered junk, which had the potential to harm your image? It is not unreasonable to infer some degree of endorsement, even if this isn't explicitly stated.

Is it the buyer’s responsibility to be aware of these strategies and not allow adverts to manipulate their emotions? If you are able to prevent anyone ever manipulating your emotions then you are a better man than me. Of course our emotions get manipulated, and often we willingly allow this to happen. I don't like it when an advert makes me feel bad, yet if it is an advert, say, for the charity NSPCC which campaigns against child abuse then, then I know that I ought to feel bad about the things the adverts depict. On the other hand, if an advert makes me feel good that's a gift for free, and I haven't even bought the product! Before buying it I will consider the practicalities, of course, but in my eyes its value is already enhanced. That's how human emotions work.

Consumers are not puppets, we do succeed in resisting what we see as irresponsible or shameless manipulation of our emotions. It is in the advertiser's own interest not to go too far in this respect, but to remain within the bounds of good taste. Campaigns backfire badly when advertising executives get this wrong.

Yes, emphatically, the buyer has responsibilities. The responsibility doesn't all lie with the seller or advertiser. But there are different cases to consider. If your marketing campaign is aimed at younger persons, especially children, then different rules apply than if it is aimed at adults. It's a matter of common sense.

The dark side of life

2010-10-14T10:26:00.023+01:00

On Thur, Oct 14, 2010 at 08:01:45
Aviral asked this question:

Is it not that thinking deeply is in some way equivalent to thinking negatively. If it is not so why were some great preachers so moved by seeing the dark side of life. Was their thinking not negative initially. Was it awareness or a sort of fear to face the same things later in their life. Was it the fear that made them discard this materialistic world.

I'm not sure I fully understand Aviral's question. 'A sort of fear to face the same things later in their life' — what does that mean? But you could read the question as a response to an earlier post of mine, Human test tubes:

Actually, I rather like looking into the abyss. When I cast my eyes around this dingy world, the tawdry sideshows that human beings call 'culture', the abyss is the only thing with any real depth. Anxiety is the only real human emotion. (I think Freud said that.) But philosophy isn't just about plumbing the dizzy depths. It's about remembering and focusing. About being present. It can sometimes be a pleasurable activity (especially if you have a taste for Schadenfreude) but it's not something you do for pleasure.

'Tawdry sideshows' is a phrase suggested by a topic I was looking at around about this time last year, Poshlust and moral incontinence. The problem with diagnosing poshlust is that such diagnoses so easily become examples of the very thing they deprecate.

I could talk about Freud. Or a thinker I know a bit more about (because it's my field) Schopenhauer. Now there's a gloomy philosopher for you. But, actually, Schopenhauer is the best example of a Western philosopher I can think of for whom philosophy is a kind of eschatology, not in the Christianizing sense but much closer to Buddhism and the idea that this world is an illusion created by our slavery to desire. All one needs to do, in order to end the suffering, is to free oneself of desire. For Schopenhauer, the magic key is art. For Buddhism, there's the practice of meditation.

I'm putting this in a deliberately crass way, because it really doesn't interest me. The best example of this line of thought is something I remember from Colin Wilson's new Preface, written many years later, to his first book The Outsider (1956). As a young man, determined to lose your virginity, nothing seems more wonderful and desirable than the sexual act. Finally, you succeed in getting some hapless girl into bed. And afterwards you lie there thinking, 'Is that it?'

The existential sentiment is expressed perfectly in the Lieber and Stoller song, Is That All There Is?. (Google the title to find the lyrics.) That thought is the beginning of philosophy.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

— Dying soliloquy of the android Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) in Blade Runner

In the end, everything goes. But isn't that a good thing? Isn't that what a good Buddhist wants? To achieve a state which is not death, but the nearest damn thing to it. Nietzsche and Freud saw through that.

This leaves me feeling a bit sick. That's not my shade of black. My black is much closer to a Nietzschean black. But even Nietzsche is ultimately too religious for my taste. I'm trying to think of a philosopher who epitomizes the contemptuous rejection of 'all things white and wonderful'. Can't think of any. Most of the thinkers who venture to the dark side, in whatever way they do it, secretly hanker after the colour white.

Maybe Stirner. Why do anarchists like the colour black? Does anyone know? (This article has some suggestions.)

I once wrote something about philosophy and the colour black in my Glass House Philosopher notebook (Notebook 1, page 51), accompanied by the soundtrack to Escape From New York. Was I just being cute? Or did I see something — out of the corner of my eye? The hero of the hour is Descartes in his Meditations on First Philosophy: 'Black is the prevailing colour of this all-time classic.'

You can discount Descartes' ostensive religious aim in proving the existence of the soul. Locked up in his stove room, his aim is to find one nugget of absolute, indisputable truth. Even an all-powerful evil demon couldn't persuade me of my own non-existence.

It's the problem, but also the cure. It's what gets you into the existential predicament (see my post on Camus on absurdity). But it's also the solution, because if you make sufficient effort in directing your gaze inwards, you see through it. If nothing has meaning then everything has meaning. 'The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man' (Ludwig Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.43). But it isn't. Not really. There is only the world ('all that is the case'). The rest (which 'cannot be said') is just your mood. Snap out of it!

And when you have snapped out of it, you will find that nothing remains to be done except to pursue the question of what is. Everything else is a distraction (which is why one needs the dark).

I very rarely read fiction. The last novel I remember reading from cover to cover was a pulp karate novel, a clichéd story about a young man, lost and confused, who comes upon a group of dedicated karate students. He joins them and learns the true meaning of pain. Forget your Bruce Lees. The aim of karate is the brutal refashioning of the human body into a blunt weapon, which you learn to wield with exquisite grace and speed. You smash your forearm to pulp until it becomes sufficiently hardened to block any blow without flinching.

(A neighbour who once did karate — I think he was the one who lent me the book — told me that karate practitioners have terrible problems with piles. All those body hardening exercises are at the expense of weakening the pelvic floor. They should go to maternity classes.)

Think of philosophy as karate for the mind. You learn to surmount every kind of mental pain. The mind is refashioned into a weapon whose only purpose is seeking out the truth, aletheia. Emotions, moods, desires are all distractions. Philosophers like the dark side because they love to tempt themselves, test themselves. I understand this gung ho attitude but at the same time something about it also repels me. Perhaps for that reason I will never be a true philosopher.

As Dirty Harry (Clint Eastwood) once famously said, 'A man's got to know his limitations.' Do you feel lucky, punk?

What any god can do or know

2010-10-12T10:58:00.036+01:00

On Tues, Oct 12, 2010 at 03:18:29
Crystal asked this question:

Does God know what it's like to be a bat?

On Tues, Oct 5, 2010 at 18:53:14
Marl asked this question:

My question here is, Can God himself reverse history so I can change something in the past? Also I have some reasons to go against but also to go with the theory that maybe he can reverse history.

A. Reasons against the theory:

1. God makes it clear that we make mistakes and must learn from them.

2. God is not a genie in a magic lamp.

3. God cannot reverse history because he does not have the power.

4. God would not do this for one person and not the whole world.

5. God would not reverse history because it would wind back everything that had happened to everyone else and take their free will away.

6. God does not need to reverse history.

B. Responses to A:

1. We have the right to make heaven on Earth. If all time in history is the same, we can go back to make it as we want to correct our mistakes.

2. Nothing else we know can make us able to change history so God is the only thing that can. We do not need to ask for money because we can get it but [without God] we can't reverse history and change it.

3. If God has no control over reversing history, then he cannot do everything. If God made the universe, he can do what he wants with it, anyway, how big a thing is reversing history? why should reversing history be hard?

4. But if God has done it, nobody will ever know.

5. If you changed something in history, it would not take everybody else's free will away because they could react how they wanted to what had been done.

6. God can do what he likes but if you do need to reverse history, he's the only thing that can.

I love the question that Crystal has asked, but Marl has to be given credit for attempting an answer his question — something that we advise anyone submitting questions to Ask a Philosopher to try do do.

Before we get started, there's an excellent discussion of changing the past in Michael Dummett's article 'Bringing About the Past' reprinted in Richard Gale Ed. The Philosophy of Time Macmillan 1968 pp 252-274. Crystal's question is prompted by Thomas Nagel's famous piece, 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?' Philosophical Review 1974 pp 435-450, reprinted in many anthologies.

I don't recall that Nagel brings up the question whether God can know what it is like to be a bat; he argues that we can't, and therefore a basic assumption of physicalism is brought under strong pressure. Dummett in his long and intricate discussion considers as one of his examples asking God to make something have happened in the past, praying 'that the announcer has made a mistake in not including my son's name on the list of survivors'. That is something we seem to have no difficulty in imagining, and yet which seems to imply God's power to bring about something in the past.

What is the point of all this? Especially if you're an atheist, why get so het up about what God can do or not do? As a principled non-believer, my justification would be that considering what God can know or do, or, better, what any god (with a small 'g') can know or do, we are using a kind of shorthand for considering fundamental questions of epistemology and ontology.

Let's start from that premise. There are very good reasons (in my view) for holding that no god exists. But if he (or she, or it) did, what knowledge or powers could conceivably be attributed to such an entity?

The crux of Nagel's argument in 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?' is that we can't conceive of what bat awareness or consciousness is like because there is too wide a gulf between human perception (through sight, hearing etc.) and bat perception (through sonar). It is crucial to his argument that the issue we are considering is knowing what something is like. I know what eating pineapple ice cream is like, even though I have never tasted pineapple ice cream, because I have eaten ice cream many times and I have also tasted pineapple. It doesn't require a great mental feat to put the two together. But no amount of mental gymnastics will bring me to the point of appreciating how the world 'appears' from the point of view of a bat. You can make up anything you like (as a novelist writing a story whose main characters are bats would) but in this case it is pure fantasy.

But God (or 'any god') isn't confined to our forms of human perception. He (or she or it etc.) doesn't need eyes to see or ears to hear. Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason speculates that God does not acquire knowledge by subsuming 'intuitions' under 'concepts', because He has a form of knowing which is directly intuitive. He grasps each and every thing in its very existential essence. There is no logical or perceptual gap, as is the case for created beings such as ourselves.

Consider this analogy: in order to determine the current state of my Apple Power Macintosh G3 (soon to be replaced, I hope, by a G5), I need to look at the screen. Whatever is going on inside the grey box, information written to RAM or onto disk, or the instructions being processed by the CPU, is something to which I can have no direct access. There is software (the MacsBug debugger, as my G3 crashes rather often) which can give some information about this, and display the information on the screen. But would it be possible (leaving aside the question of the immense amount of time needed, given that thousands of instructions are being executed every second) to display all the information?

There does seem a logical problem here, which one can illustrate with the somewhat simpler example of HTML code. One of my pages, Today's Note consists of a representation of a Unix screen, running the text editor Pico. This is in fact the method I use to update that page. I don't upload the page using an FTP program. I write directly onto it using my text editor. On your monitor you will see representations of the HTML code which has been used to create this effect. What you don't see is the extra code which is needed to represent the code. (You can check this for yourself by going to 'View → Page Source'.) In principle, it would be impossible to show everything using HTML. I could add even more extra code to represent the 'extra code' but then this new extra code would not appear on the screen.

All human knowledge is in a sense 'representative' knowledge. There is a space, a gap, between knower and known. Even when we have so-called 'direct' knowledge through action (the sense of touch, or awareness of making an effort, or the proprioceptive feedback which enables us to know how our limbs are moving) this knowledge is immediate and non-representative only when described from the point of view of the agent. I may know that I am moving my fingers as I type this, but what is going on beneath the skin, in my muscles and sinews, is out of my immediate ken. Even if I lacked all senses other than the sense of touch (as in the Helen Keller story) I still need language and concepts, to represent the knowledge gained through 'direct' action.

This leads to a rather simple (possibly too simple) characterization of the difference between human knowledge and God's knowledge. God doesn't know the world and His creatures by means of representations (bringing intuitions under concepts). He knows them directly, just as they are. According to Descartes, He is their creator and sustainer for every moment that they continue in existence.

It follows that there isn't a synapse or a cell or a molecule in the body of a flying bat that that God doesn't 'know'. Nor is God confined to only knowing about the world on the very lowest level. He can abstract. He can consider the bat as a collection of molecules, or cells, or organs, or as a discrete entity in relation to its environment. But I don't think that this is enough for knowing what it is like to be a bat. God knows too much — not least, that he is God.

In Western philosophy, Spinoza is the philosopher who has come closest to solving this conundrum. The bat is just a 'mode' of God. It no independent existence from God, the only true 'substance'. God 'knows' himself as the bat, but the bat, from its point of view doesn't know this and necessarily cannot know this (otherwise it would be God). Spinoza, through the medium of his finely wrought philosophy, knows and yet doesn't know that he is God.

For making this claim, Spinoza incurred the charge of pantheism, and his insistence on arguing the case at every opportunity got him excommunicated from the Amsterdam Jewish community. But we're not concerned with the finer points of theology. Our question is what any god could know. The question of what kind of god would be worthy of adoration or worship is something which does not the least bit interest me.

I said that this was the best case for explaining the possibility of God's knowledge of what it is like to be a bat. But I don't think it is good enough. It depends, ultimately, on a fudge. If God 'knows' everything only in Spinoza's sense, because God just is everything, then I have lost my grasp of what 'know' means. Even if we assume that God's knowledge is 'intuitive' (in Kant's sense) and non-representational, we still need conceptual room for God as a self-conscious entity, which Spinoza does not seem to provide.

In other words, if God just is the universe, seen under the aspect of unity, then the term 'God' reduces to a mere 'something concerning which nothing can be said'. To talk about God is just to talk about the universe.

Let's now look at the case of changing the past. Dummett notes in his article that the possibility of praying to God in order to change the past is unacceptable to orthodox Jewish theology. I didn't know that. You learn something new every day. But are the orthodox Rabbis right?

I remember the day when I received my A-level examination results, which would determine whether or not I went to university (I'm keeping this simple for the sake of the example). Suppose I did believe in God. I have no difficulty in imagining that I might pray to God that I passed, and that God heard me and granted my request. I'm sure many people have done this.

One easy get-out would be to say that God exists outside of time, and therefore knows my prayer 'before' I made it. So no funny backwards causation is involved. But this solves the problem of how God can change the past by effectively destroying the difference between past, present and future. I no longer know what 'cause' means in this scenaro. So let's stick with a world in time, and a God who is also in time and not looking down on the universe sub specie aeternitatis.

What did God have to do, in the exam results example? The slip of paper inside the envelope with 'failed' written on it had to change to 'passed'. All the steps which led up to the typing of that word (and my marks or grades) had to alter also, right back to the point where some examiner was marking my script, and indeed before that to when I was actually sitting in the exam making a total mess my (say) Pure and Applied Mathematics paper. But how could I have written a good paper, if I hadn't revised? How could I have revised, when most of my time was spent going to parties and getting stoned?

I can totally see how Marl would object that this is a serious encroachment into my free will, not to mention the other difficulties.

But we're looking for a logical objection, if there is any. The question of whether or not you would like the kind of God who would do this, or consider them 'worthy of adoration or worship' is neither here nor there.

Dummett's case rests largely on a single observation: If I know that it was the case that P (e.g. that it was the case that I failed) then I can't, by any action including prayer intend to bring it about that not-P (e.g. to bring it about that I passed). It's a logical contradiction. In fact, it is more or less the same logical contradiction which vitiates time travel (as traditionally conceived — see my Afterword to David Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself).

Okay, but let's look at this from another angle. Where is the past? The past is gone, its water under the bridge. (John Donne: 'Tell me where all past yeares are, Or who cleft the divel's foote'.) But where we are, always, is on the bridge of the present. We can remember, infer from evidence, hypothesize more or less accurately about 'what happened', but always with the proviso that we could be wrong, that is to say, there is no logical contradiction in the idea that the most vivid memory of something that happened only ten seconds ago could be false.

As long as I don't know what's inside the envelope, the question whether I passed or failed is up for grabs, at least by me (as indeed is the question whether my maths teacher knows, whether the secretary at the examining board knows etc.). It's not that difficult to think in this way of the past as something malleable, or flexible, not fixed and final. From my perspective, at least, there is just me and God and the world which God partially reveals to me and partially conceals. That's all 'the world' is — from my perspective.

This sounds rather like anti-realism about the past (which Dummett defends in another article, 'On the Reality of the Past' in Truth and Other Enigmas Duckworth 1978 pp 358-374). But there is just one rather important difference: it is essential, in order to make sense of exam results example that one is only considering my perspective (or our perspective if a group of persons is praying together) not human knowledge generally, not 'what can be known' of the past, but only what I (or you and I) can know.

As Marl has seen, if God changes the past, as such, He changes it for everyone, not just for me. Whereas, if all God changes is 'my past' or 'our past' then we have left behind the very idea that there is such a thing as the past. This is just a little too close to Solipsism for comfort. (If you can be a quasi-solipsist about 'we'.)

Ultimately, as I have indicated, the question whether God can know what it is like to be a bat, or whether God can change the past isn't about theology. It is about the nature of the universe and our knowledge of it. But one thing it does show is that as a theologian you can't make assumptions about God's powers without at the same time making fairly hefty commitments to your epistemology and metaphysics.

Being in two places at one time

2010-10-06T10:19:00.023+01:00

On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 14:35:32
Farnaz asked this question:

Hello!

Is it possible that a person can be in different places at the same time?

Kind regards,

Farnaz

The ability to be (or, alternatively, 'appear' — that's one of the questions we have to decide) at two different places at the same time is known as bilocation. This cropped up in a story I once wrote:

The giant out door auditorium was filled to capacity. Overhead, robot drinks and ice cream vendors darted about amongst the hovering TV cameras. On the podium a man in a blue tunic had just started to speak. Distorted images of his friendly features loomed on scores of giant video screens.

'...Some of you might remember me from the old television series, Star Trek. For the benefit of those who haven't seen any of the episodes, my name is Captain Kirk. And yes, I am a real Star Ship Captain. The series is substantially based on true events, though of course we had to simplify things to fit each story into a fifty minute slot. Followers of the series will be glad to hear that all your favourite characters are here. You might even get the chance to meet some of them. You will all have met Mr Spock of course...'

Captain Kirk's words were almost drowned in wild cheering. He paused to salute his Science Officer, who was seated behind the podium. Spock stood up briefly to take a stiff bow.

'...Like the rest of us here today, Spock has para-psychic powers. In his case it is the relatively rare but extremely useful gift of bilocation, the ability to appear in several different places at one and the same time. Some of the Catholic Saints were able to bilocate, I believe.

'Well that is by the way. The main question that seems to be on everyone's lips is, 'Where is Heaven?' That's a little difficult to explain. But if you give me a few minutes, I'll do my best to fill you in. Mr Spock has written a useful little book for those of you who've done a bit of maths and physics, complete with equations and flow diagrams, but I shall just try to keep things simple.'

Kirk paused for a few moments to collect his thoughts. The famous smile beamed down from scores of video screens. One thing you knew for sure. The maths and physics weren't above his head.

The Possible World Machine Unit 12: Space Hopper
Downloadable from www.philosophypathways.com/download.html

In the story, a group of persecuted telepaths escape to an alternative universe existing in a different space from our actual universe (but not in a different time). The idea was to test Kant's claim that there necessarily can exist only one space using a thought experiment which doesn't rely, as Anthony Quinton's does, on a subject falling asleep and appearing to 'dream' of a life which is no less coherent than his 'waking' experience (Anthony Quinton 'Spaces and Times' Philosophy 37, pp 130-147 1962).

In my tale, there is said to be a fully scientific explanation of how there came to be two spaces. It's the 'simplest explanation' of the data. (There was a 'cataclysmic explosion', and a fragment of space 'split off' from the universe to form a space of its own.) There's no reason, in principle, why experimental evidence couldn't lead us to conclude that Kant was wrong about there being one space, just as Quantum Mechanics has shown that he was wrong about the a priori truth of determinism.

I don't know if that's acceptable as a response to Kant. It amounts to little more than stating the very thing that Kant denies. Unlike the case of QM, we don't have the least bit of scientific evidence for multiple spaces (ignoring things like the many-worlds interpretation of QM which seems to be a different thing entirely). It is pure speculation about what we would conclude if such alleged evidence turned up. In this case, we really need to consider the argument Kant gives (in the first part of Critique of Pure Reason), and whether the argument is in fact logically sound. (Many commentators agree — e.g. P.F. Strawson in Bounds of Sense [1966] — that Kant's argument for the necessity of determinism is over-ambitious: the most he can claim is that experience should exhibit sufficient regularity to enable us to make reliable predictions.)

If there were overwhelming logical objections to the very idea of a person being located at different places at the same time, then no amount of empirical 'evidence' would be sufficient to persuade us otherwise. We would have no choice but to offer an alternative explanation. However, it is worth pointing out, that at least some of the things said about the bilocating Catholic Saints can be understood in the weaker sense of the individual in question appearing to observers at a place (as a realistic apparition) as opposed to actually being there in the flesh.

But is genuine bilocation — actually being in two different places at the same time — such a nonsensical idea?

Before we can even consider that question, we have to address the prior question of what it is to be located at a space. For trees and rocks, or planets and stars, there is a simple and conclusive test. Spatial position is one of the criteria (or, indeed, the main criterion) for identity. If an object, say, a paperweight is seen at two places at the same time, then we have two exactly similar paperweights, not one paperweight. If I scratch the paperweight on my desk, and an identical scratch mark simultaneously appears on the matching paperweight on my coffee table, or if smashing one paperweight with a hammer immediately results in the destruction of the other, then the conclusion would be that some kind of unknown causal influence has occurred, not that this is proof that the 'two' paperweights were in fact one and the same object or entity.

Of course we are free to call the matching paperweights by a single name, describe it as an extended 'object'. This might even be a useful thing to do. (We might want to distinguish superficially matching paperweights from genuine pairs which exhibit this remarkable property.)

With persons, on the other hand, an entirely new factor is brought into play. Persons have a point of view. If I have a twin on Twin Earth — or for that matter Doncaster — even if the same things appear to happen to my twin as happen to me and at the very same time, we are not the same person. I have my point of view and my twin has his point of view.

The problem with this intuition, as Daniel Dennett entertainingly shows in his piece 'Where Am I?' (originally in Brainstorms 1978, reproduced in Dennett and Hofstadter Eds. The Mind's I 1981 pp 217-229) is that if we assume the materialist hypothesis that the mind is a kind of program which 'runs' on the brain, then there are various science fiction scenarios where we simply don't know how to answer the question, 'where I am'.

I'm not going to pursue Dennett's idea of brains being simulated by computer programs. If the self is a program, and a program is (as it necessarily must be) a kind of thing, a set of instructions which can be written in any language, realized on any suitable hardware (or 'wetware'), if that's all it is, then it's hardly surprising that you can't 'find' the location of the self, or even decide whether you are dealing with one self or more than one self. The 'GK program' would be like Windows XP.

So I'm going to assume we don't know whether or not you could 'write' the program for GK. In other words, I'm assuming that you can be a materialist without being committed to Dennett's version of materialism.

The US flying drone which destroyed the alleged Al-Qaeda cell last Saturday was 'flown' by a GI operative sitting comfortably at a laptop. In World War II, the Japanese kamikaze gave their lives to achieve the same objective. But what exactly is the difference between being there, at the moment the high explosive detonates, and not being there?

Let's notch this up a bit. Instead of a metal and plastic flying drone, let's have a fully functioning robot which reproduces my bodily movements via a broadband radio connection. To make this really effective, I need the ability to feel when my robot is damaged. This is a very expensive piece of equipment, what better way to protect it than to give the operator a suitable jab of pain? As my robot engages in battle (presumably with other robots) I have the most vivid sense of 'being there'. Only, I am not there. It's just an illusion, isn't it?

Let's say that as a result of carelessness or lack of sufficient fighting skill, my robot gets destroyed, and I feel the pain of its destruction. After receiving a severe dressing down from my commanding officer, I'm issued with another robot with the warning not to let this happen again, or else. This time, I will not only feel the pain, I will receive the same injuries, in the same body parts that my robot receives. If it dies, then I die.

Remember that my robot doesn't have a brain, or a computer simulating my thought processes. It is just a sophisticated drone. And yet, in this extreme case, wouldn't it be correct to say that where my robot is — where the action is happening — there I am also?

If I put my hand into a fire, then the fire doesn't only burn my hand, it burns me. Whereas a drone under my control is just like an extended artificial hand. What puts me there, in the flames, is nothing other than the fact that it is my life that is at stake. I am where my vulnerable parts are.

It helps to have 'eyes' and 'ears' where your vulnerable parts are located otherwise you will injure yourself too easily. But merely having eyes and ears at a location (as in the case of the Al-Qaeda drone) isn't sufficient for being there.

If Dennett is right about the possibility of a brain program, then human beings do not, in principle, have any vulnerable parts. As noted above, the self program can be endlessly reproduced. On the other hand, if Dennett is wrong, and brain function cannot be duplicated in a program (more precisely, by a Turing Machine) then the living human body which I call 'mine', or at least that part of me (say the brain) whose destruction would lead to my death, is necessarily where I am.

I have noted that 'genuine' bilocation must be more than just appearing in a place. The appearance must correspond to reality. As we have also seen, it must be more than my manipulating a robot or simulacrum of me at that place, because the destruction of the robot or simulacrum does not entail my destruction. To be in a place is to risk death at that place. If I can do this in two or more places simultaneously, then I can bilocate, but not otherwise.

Possibility of non-existence

2010-09-29T14:32:00.011+01:00

On Sun, Sept 26, 2010 at 08:17:17
John asked this question:

Can non-existence be supported, if once existence has occurred? And by a good estimation, existence has always been. Is there such a thing as non-existence?

John's question is prompted by a legitimate sense of bewilderment at the very idea that there might have been nothing at all — that what might have been true but is not in fact true of reality or how things are is that nothing existed: that a state of sheer non-existence obtained.

I am assuming that we can still talk of 'how things are' or 'reality', as indeed one must in order to make any sense of John's question. As Wittgenstein states in the first two propositions of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 'The world is all that is the case. The world is the totality of facts, not of things.'

In the case where a state of 'sheer non-existence' obtains, it is a fact that there are no things. Nothing exists, in the sense of 'no things'. Whether or not you like this way of talking (one of my philosophy lecturers once commented on an essay I'd shown him, 'I'd much rather defend the necessary existence of God than the necessary existence of facts!') I can't think of any other way to approach this.

It seems, prima facie, to make sense to say that if the Big Bang hadn't banged, if there hadn't been anything to go bang, then there would have been no universe, no space or time, no galaxies, stars or planets. No us. But what about the laws of nature? Are we supposing they to be non-existent too? Or can laws still exist — which dictated what would happen if something else happened — even if nothing physically existed?

I'm not sure that this isn't a question for a physicist rather than a philosopher. Suppose that according to law L, there is a finite but very small probability of a grain of matter coming into existence (something to 'go bang'). However, if an event is only probable, or improbable (it makes no difference), then it is still logically possible that it never in fact occurs. It is logically possible, according to the laws of thermodynamics, that all the air will spontaneously rush out of this room (all the air molecules as a result of their trillions of collisions will just happen to all be pointing in the direction of the door). But it will never happen.

But can it conceivably be a 'law' that matter can spontaneously just appear, out of nowhere? I think John would say that an assumption we are making — which he will not allow — is that such a law, or indeed any laws, could 'exist' in the absence of any physical matter, or energy fields, or anything similar.

One could object that John isn't entitled to say, 'And by a good estimation, existence has always been.' How does he know? We know (or rather, according to the best cosmological theory currently available — if that counts as knowledge) that the Big Bang happened so-and-so many billions of years ago (13.7 to 14 billion was the answer I found when I searched on Google). Except that according to physics that's when time started too, so in that sense it is true that existence 'has always been'.

Richard Swinburne in his book Space and Time (Macmillan 2nd. edn. 1981) argues that we are not logically compelled to identify time with 'physical time', in which case it would not be self-contradictory to state that there was a time before physical time existed. At least (so he argues) an empty time is a more coherent idea than an empty space. In one way this satisfies our naive intuitions (that there is no 'first moment' of time) but creates another problem, which vexed the Presocratic philosopher Parmenides: 'And what need would have driven it [sc. the One] later rather than earlier, beginning from nothing, to grow?' (DK Fr. 8).

In other words, given a prior state of non-existence, supposing such could occur, you cannot get existence, because as each moment of eternal time ticks by, there is no reason why anything should happen at this particular time, rather than some other time. Maybe that's true, if you grant Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient Reason. Or maybe Swinburne is wrong about time and the physicists (e.g. Hawking) are right, and time and existence necessarily go together because time begins with the Big Bang.

That still does not get us any nearer answering John's question. Given that something does exist (and maybe always existed, but this isn't crucial) how can this make way for a state of sheer non-existence? Once you have something how can there ever be nothing? Or, perhaps more to the point, how can we so much as conceive of a state of non-existence?

I haven't got an answer to that. In my book Naive Metaphysics I argue that when we consider the question, 'why anything exists' there are two problems not one: why there is a universe, and why there is I. Those are baffling questions. But isn't it also true that it is as hard to conceive of my non-existence as it is to conceive of the non-existence of the universe?

You can't argue from difficulty in conceiving alone. Maybe some persons are better at forming conceptions than others. I tell you that I can't conceive of my non-existence and you reply that you have no difficulty in conceiving of your non-existence. End of discussion. Exactly the same applies, if the topic of our conversation is the non-existence of the universe.

Rescuing capitalism

2010-09-17T11:14:00.017+01:00

On Thur, Sept 16, 2010 at 04:52:35
Derrick asked this question:

I recently read a report on a request made by the Russian Minister of Finance who asked that Russians smoke and drink more as the country needed the revenue. Is this not as a result of their adoption of the capitalist system, a system that has been faulty since its exception?

Communism did not work and the West did its utmost to see it failed, the Capitalist system is no better as it benefits only a small segment of the population and the myth of the creation of wealth which is now the holy grail is all smoke and mirrors and has value as long as the paper Dollar retains its value.

When it comes to finance we have people who are awarded the Nobel prize for the creation of systems that are supposed to improve how systems work, I have yet to see this actually effect anything, in fact things keep getting worse.

We are told how well we are doing while pensioners don't know how they are going to survive.

We are also told the markets know best, best for who? A shareholder's interest is never a countries interest, self-interest is the only consideration.

What do we need to break the cycle of greed, a 3rd World war? But then war is profitable.

I understand Greek Philosophers had thoughts on matters of finance, does Philosophy have solutions or is man so flawed that we are too far into the abyss to pull back?

Derrick's question is timely. I have been seriously considering whether I want to continue as Editor of Philosophy for Business, the e-journal which I launched in November 2003, in an atmosphere of heady optimism that a 'reformed' version of Capitalism, or 'Capitalism 2.0' was just around the corner. The philosophers would show the way.

While the readership of the e-journal has steadily increased, the flow of articles has significantly declined. There are undoubtedly business ethicists out there, marketing their expertise, but they've gotten smart. They know the things that companies and corporations don't want to hear, so they don't tell them. All the talk is of how, by increasing the company's ethical quotient, or boosting its CSR strategy, or even developing the 'emotional intelligence' of managers and executives, profits will inevitably increase. Cast your bread upon the waters.

Don't mistake these remarks for cynicism. I think that the business ethicists are doing the right thing, the only thing they can do, by working for evolutionary change and not trying to start a revolution. If things seem to be going very slowly one has to remember that the system has massive inertia. Change will come, but it will come slowly. At least, that's the optimistic forecast.

But too slowly for the likes of me. The great slogan of defenders of Capitalism (of which I am one) is 'freedom'. I believe in freedom. You can't have freedom without the marketplace, where goods, commodities and services are freely bartered and exchanged. That's the way it works. This isn't caving in to human 'selfishness' but rather the only way the game can be played. There's a place for ethics, provided you recognize that ethics and CSR are things you have to budget for. In some years you have more to spend and in other years less.

What really hurts me is seeing how unfree this same system has made us. If someone offers you work you don't waste time thinking whether you really need the money (unless you are lucky to have an inheritance or private income). It doesn't matter if you are a senior executive or do the postal round. Now, as a response to the recent downturn, belts are being tightened once more, we are being asked to work harder and longer — while we avert our eyes from those unlucky enough to be cast on the scrapheap.

We are prisoners of our own expectations — for example, that the only healthy state for an economy is growth. You must consume more, so that the money can go round, job opportunities increase etc. This is all economic witchcraft. Why not consume less, work less, have more time to dream, more time to philosophize?

Our wealth is one another, our friendships, our human capacities, the world of culture that human beings have created. When will there be an economics of that? Could there be, or is it more realistic to assume that the very concept of being 'economical' is at fault, that human beings are at their best when they are extravagant, when they don't count the cost? When was the last time you treated yourself — or your partner, or family — to something you couldn't afford? If you ever did, did you feel guilty afterwards? Shouldn't one feel more guilty at allowing such base considerations as money to influence one's decisions? (Actually, I think we do — based on my own experience.)

I sympathize with the Russian Minister of Finance. Alcohol and tobacco are two of the greatest benefits bestowed on humankind and at the same time two of the greatest curses. They are not just 'addictions'. They make you feel good. I can't think of anything more important then feeling good about oneself and about the world. You'll say that the country 'doesn't need' even more resources expended on the illnesses caused by smoking, or the social disorder caused by drinking. But maybe there is a balance that hasn't been reached yet. The economic benefits of a ten percent increase in smoking, say, marginally outweigh the cost of the increased burden on the health services. I can see that.

In his question, Derrick refers to the Greek philosophers. One of the fashionable trends in contemporary business ethics — reflected in the number of articles on this topic published in Philosophy for Business — is the application of Aristotelian virtue theory to the business world. The focus on the virtues needed for the 'good life', and in particular, the virtues needed to be a good business person, is one that I welcome. (See my Ethical Dilemmas, in particular Unit 10.)

The problem is that if you are looking to redress the imbalance between the rich and the poor, Aristotle and Greek philosophy generally is the wrong model. The Greeks had no problem with the idea of social inequality. Slaves were an essential part of the well-ordered polis. Unless you give a totally false, 'Christianized' gloss on the notion of 'virtue', there is no necessary corollary that exercising the virtues, or the business virtues will lead to a 'fairer' world, where we can all be free and equal together.

But I agree with Derrick that the world is in a mess, in so many ways, as it always has been (although that's no comfort).

My response is unoriginal, one that you will have heard many times before. If you can't change the world, if things move too slowly regardless of your best efforts, then at least you can work on yourself. If you are well-off, in a good job, then stop being so complacent. Become aware of your over-dependence on the system, which rewards you now but tomorrow may kick you out through the back door. If you are poor, then stop complaining. Consider all the ways there are of improving yourself without amassing useless material possessions. Ask how you can be helpful to others rather than just looking to others for help.

I am going to publish my answer to Derrick in the next issue of Philosophy for Business, which is due to go out at the beginning of next week, provided I can scratch together another couple of articles to go with it. If you are a philosopher or business ethicist reading this, then the offer of the Editorship is genuine. There's no salary, but then there's not a lot of work to do. Mainly, you will be badgering (or, if necessary, bullying) colleagues or people you know into writing articles. It would look good on anyone's CV.

If you're interested, email me on klempner@fastmail.net. Initially, you will be invited to guest edit one issue. This is an experiment we've successfully tried in the past. If you pass the test, and still have the appetite for more, then the job's yours for as long as you can continue the flow of quality material. Think about it. It could change your life — it certainly changed mine.

Definition of a solipsist

2010-09-10T12:00:00.027+01:00

On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 00:40:24
Dave asked this question:

I have not studied philosophy but I seem to keep gravitating to it unwittingly.

I spend a lot of time thinking and I recently discovered Solipsism and thought it fit almost perfectly with my beliefs.

However, upon trying to find out more about it I just found people using it as a device to make ironic jokes. I just seek clarification on what I am and whether I am a type of Solipsist.

People seem to think that Solipsists would not want to congregate because by definition they are denying everyone but themselves and see little value in others.

I believe in quite the opposite. If all other people are fabrications of my mind, I would find great value in meeting with them especially those with similar ideas. This is because I am not consciously creating them and the fact that they are aspects of my mind's creation means that they are aspects of myself and I have created them for a reason.

Have I got Solipsism right or wrong? Or am I specific type of Solipsist?

I don't want to get into a boring taxonomy of philosophical positions. And who cares about names and labels anyway? However, it is necessary to make some preliminary cuts with the analytical knife in order to address Dave's question.

The first cut — the first option which I want to put on one side — is scepticism about other minds. Scepticism about other minds, or more specifically the hypothesis that I am the only conscious being in the universe, could be contingently true if either of the following circumstances obtained:

(a) I live in a world populated by robots disguised as human beings, each controlled by a pre-programmed tape. (This is to rule out the possibility, which a materialist might argue for, that if the 'robots' are genuine examples of AI, then they have consciousness just as I do.) The super-intelligent alien scientist who created the robots and tapes has died.

(b) Mind-body dualism, of the epiphenomenalist variety, is true, but I am the only person with a mind as well as a body. Everyone else that I meet is a zombie, which behaves in every respect just like a human being except that it lacks a mind or consciousness. (I'm not asserting that this is necessarily a coherent possibility, merely that it is initially plausible. I actually think that it is incoherent, but I won't try to show that here.)

The second cut I want to make relates to another contingent possibility, related to the Matrix scenario. Imagine that the Machine World is devastated by a massive power cut, leaving only myself alive and my dreams of living in Sheffield in 2010 and answering questions for the Ask a Philosopher web site. Apart from my personal life-support system, all the machines have ground to a halt. It is possible that I am the only consciousness in the universe (assuming the absence of any alien life forms).

Well, actually, I am answering those questions, and not just dreaming that I am answering them, because we are assuming, by hypothesis, that I am in full possession of my intellectual faculties. However, the questions originate, not from named or anonymous surfers on the internet, but in the computer program my brain is interacting with. Dave and his question are the invention of the original Architect of the Matrix.

Why am I confident that none of these scenarios fits Dave's description? He states that he 'recently discovered Solipsism and thought it fit almost perfectly with my beliefs'. No plausible process of scientific investigation or inference to the best explanation could lead to the belief that I exist in a world populated by robots, or the other bizarre possibilities outlined above. You don't believe something just because it's possible, unless you are suffering from serious mental problems.

So now we need to supply an argument — which Dave does not give — which might plausibly have lead him to the conclusion that he is a 'solipsist'. By understanding how that argument works, we can diagnose exactly what kind of solipsist Dave is.

I suggest that the missing argument is along the lines given by Descartes at the beginning of the Meditations. All I know for certain is my own existence, and the fact that I have experiences. Descartes never actually goes this far: he proposes, as a sceptical hypothesis, the idea that an evil demon is deliberately deceiving me into thinking that a material world and other people exist, when in reality all there is, is myself and the evil demon. (Note, that this goes way beyond the Matrix scenario which assumes the existence of material objects in space.)

If all that exists is myself and the evil demon, then my experience, e.g., of looking at my computer monitor has two sides. It is my experience, but it is also produced by something external to my conscious mind. Dave would say at this point, 'Exactly! I am not consciously creating the computer monitor. But my mind is still the source of my experience.' But there is a problem here. What makes this 'unconscious' source of my conscious experience mine or part of me? My experience would be just as it is now if it was the evil demon who was responsible for it. Or, rather, 'my unconscious mind' is the evil demon for all intents and purposes.

This is still unsatisfactory, because one could argue that Dave is assuming something he has no right to assume: that when experience happens, it comes from somewhere, something is 'producing' it. Why?

A large part of the answer lies in our adherence to a certain model of causal explanation. You don't have an effect without a case. You can't have experience without something producing the experience. But isn't this a merely contingent matter? Based purely on my experience, I cannot say for certain whether it has an external cause or not.

I'm going to take a leap at this point — I don't know whether Dave is willing to join me — and assume that my experiences have no external cause. All that exists in the universe, all that I have any certain knowledge of, consists of my actual experiences. This isn't some crazy lunatic fantasy but a powerful philosophical position. This is all I know, and all that could ever be. Nothing that is not this could possibly have any impact on me, or have any meaning for me.

There are some subtle arguments that the solipsist can deploy, along the lines of Kantian and Husserlian phenomenology, to the effect that, in some sense, it is necessary that my existence takes the form of perception of 'objects in space', and that I identify myself as a 'person' in relation to other 'persons'. The details aren't important. What is important is that they allow, or indeed justify, my concept of 'other persons' as an essential part of my experience, characters in the story of my world. If my experience was not like this, if it didn't take this logical form, there wouldn't be anything describable as 'me' or 'I'.

A suitable name for this position (if you are into naming philosophical positions) is transcendental solipsism. The kind of solipsist that Dave is, is a transcendental solipsist.

One very curious feature of transcendental solipsism is that, prima facie, no practical consequences follow from this theory. It's not as if you look at people in a funny way. You deal with them exactly as you would do if you didn't believe in solipsism. You can attend solipsist philosophical conventions, and argue the toss with solipsists and anti-solipsists.

I said 'prima facie', because there is a problem here. You can deal with other persons in just the same way as you would if you weren't a solipsist (or Dave's kind of solipsist). But you don't have to. After all, they are just characters in the story of 'my world'. You can choose to behave ethically, if this helps to keep up the illusion that you are enjoying their 'company', but that's just your choice. On the other hand, it might be more fun if you played games with some of these characters. After all, they are just your barbie dolls and action men. Whatever you do with your human toys can't be 'wrong'.

Personally, I wouldn't like to be stuck with this view of ethics, which is why I think it is important to find an argument which would be sufficient to refute solipsism. But that's another story.

What is a goy? joke

2010-09-06T12:42:00.015+01:00

On Thur, Sept 2, 2010 at 02:35:39
Kyle asked this question:

Hello,

I came across this joke presented in a book I was reading for my philosophy of literature class that goes as follows:

What is a goy?

A goy is a person who is a girl if examined at any time up to and including t, and a boy if examined any time after t.

I was wondering if you could explain its meaning, so I can then decide if I think it is funny.

This made me laugh, just a bit, although it could be argued that the 'joke' is on the borderline of being politically incorrect. It has an obvious, and very straightforward explanation (if you know enough about philosophy, and also are familiar with the term 'goy'). But that doesn't fully explain the humour, which incorporates an element of tragedy, like other jokes of this genre. It is also a joke about knowledge and ignorance, which explains why philosophers would find it particularly amusing.

It is a 'Jewish' joke, in the sense that it is about Jews, although I would hesitate to describe it as a 'Jewish joke', i.e. a joke which you need to be Jewish in order to fully appreciate its deeper resonances.

In common usage, the term 'goy' refers indiscriminately to non-Jews, although the Hebrew term originally referred to 'nation', including the nation of Israel. It is not a term that one would usually use in polite conversation — 'gentile' is better — although lumping everyone together who is not of the Jewish people is itself somewhat problematic.

'What became of your friend Sue?' 'She married a goy.' In this exchange, Sue's decision to 'marry out' (marry a non-Jew) is deprecated. In social mythology, one has lower expectations of the behaviour of goyim (plural of goy) than one has of one's fellow Jews. Goyim are more likely to get drunk at weddings and other social occasions. If you do business with goyim, then you are taking a greater risk than you would otherwise.

On the other hand, unlike 'n**ger', used of people of colour, 'goy' is not intended to demean or insult. You wouldn't say to someone, 'You goy!'. Or, if you did, you would expect to get a blank stare. It is a term a Jewish person would use only in conversation with other Jews. To my ear, there is a conceit (which is surely false) that non-Jews wouldn't understand what one was talking about.

As a Jew, it is a term I never use. Period. (In what follows, whenever the term 'goy' or 'goyim' appears, I am talking about the term rather than using it.) The term 'goy' is 'not one of my words', to echo what Oscar Wilde purportedly said about the word 'obscenity' (Glass House Philosopher, notebook 2, p.65). You can't (or, at least can't any more), separate it's descriptive and evaluative content.

Now to the joke:

In his 'new riddle of induction', Nelson Goodman defines 'grue' as 'An object which is green at any time up to t, or blue at any time after t.' The term 't' just refers to any arbitrary time. The riddle or paradox arises because examining emeralds and finding that they are green prima facie gives the same degree of support to the generalization, 'All emeralds are green,' as examining emeralds and finding that they are grue gives to the generalization, 'All emeralds are grue.' Yet we know that this cannot be so. 'All emeralds are grue' can only be true if something happens at t which makes all emeralds in the universe change colour. Hence the paradox.

I'm not going to discuss the paradox here, as appreciating the finer points of the debate over Goodman's new riddle of induction doesn't contribute in any way to understanding the joke.

Why is it funny? You can run Goodman's Paradox with 'boy' and 'girl' instead of 'green' and 'blue'. Or just about any pair of descriptive terms. However, you would only coin the term 'goy' if you were ignorant of the term's common meaning. Or deliberately intending to cause amusement.

One imagines a socially cloistered philosophy professor po-facedly expounding Goodman's paradox, while the audience titters. But there are other aspects too. I've already indicated how use of the term 'goy' implies uncomplimentary beliefs about goyim. To some persons, the idea of sex change is intrinsically funny. To imply that a goy changes sex at some arbitrary time, is just one more uncomplimentary belief. Not only do goyim get drunk at weddings but they also change sex when you least expect it!

Finally, there is an aspect that this joke shares with other jokes which imply, or rely on, prejudice. I said that 'goy' is 'not one of my words'. But a joke allows you to use words that are not words you would use outside the context of a joke. After all, one is only joking. The thought here is that, somehow, the joke you are telling is at the expense of those who do use the term. A kind of mock-chastisement, where you get to indulge in the very thing that you are purportedly criticizing.

Behind the humour there is tragedy, in the very fact that one perceives a need to compensate for being an outsider by putting all those who are not of one's own tribal grouping 'on the outside'. One wouldn't make this joke about Muslims and 'infidels' or about Christians and 'heretics'. It just wouldn't be funny. The infidel, the heretic is the exception, the deviation which must be corrected. While it is perfectly possible to convert to Judaism, as a rule Jews do not proselytize. The point of being Jewish would disappear if everyone became Jewish. As long as there are Jews, there must always be goyim.

Existentialism and advancing years

2010-08-16T11:48:00.063+01:00

On Tues, Aug 10, 2010 at 10:01:58
Wesley asked this question:

Has anyone written on the concept of a Post-Existential life?

I have entered the final years of my life. The life I am living now can be changed only fractionally by decisions and actions I make now. That is, it is as if all my previous decisions have painted me into this corner of this room in this house, here.

If authentic acts/ decisions are those in accordance with one's freedom, my Authenticism is absolutely limited by the limits of my freedom to act/ decide, which have become limited by all previous decisions and by Existence itself. My actions have brought me to where I am. I have decided on a course of moral and social Being. I have made decisions that now limit my health. All these limit my Freedoms and thus my Choices. I can no longer act in such ways that bring further Freedoms of Decision. All my existential life has led to this painted corner.

Granted, I have the wide freedom limited by health and financial circumstances to act in opposition to all prior decisions, 'Out of Valid Character' so to speak. To be wicked, criminal, to defile what I have held dear, to do the opposite of what I have chosen as the correct response in previous choices presented by my Freedom. But to do so seems Inauthentic in the extreme. And even so, my opportunity to act Out of Character is highly limited.

Thus, my life could be said to be Inauthentic in that I have little freedom to act, but can this be? Does one live an Authentic Life only to face death necessarily in Inauthenticity?

Rather, I see this as Authenticity leading to infinitely smaller and smaller Freedoms of Action the closer I approach and enter death. Thus, Authenticism leads to lesser and lesser, fading, then extinguished Freedom of Action. Neither Authenticism nor Inauthenticism. But even this seems unacceptable.

I would appreciate comments. Thank you.

I understand, Wesley, where this is coming from. However, I will argue that if you accept the truth in existentialism, then there can be no such thing as a 'post-existential' life.

One needs to draw a distinction, however, between 'being an existentialist' (which as it happens I am not) and 'accepting the truth in existentialism' (which I do). You'll see the reason for this distinction in a minute.

Last week, as an exercise, I gave myself a mock interview. If one is being po-faced about this, one could say that it was part of an ongoing project of seeking to 'know thyself' as Socrates advocated. The serious point is that this is knowledge which one is perpetually on the way towards and never finally achieves. Indeed, to think you had achieved it, and that there was nothing more to know would be an act of bad faith.

Of course, the whole thing was rigged. This was intended for an audience. Even so, it was surprising to me, some of the answers that slipped out. (Maybe it had something with playing Hendrix's Electric Ladyland album in the background as I was writing — which has a way, as great works of art do, of getting under the skin, loosening and unravelling the congealed layers of the psyche. Hendrix once said he wanted to write music that had the power to heal; he came closer to this than most of his generation.)

One question which I posed myself is whether or not I am a stoic. I said, somewhat cagily, 'I wouldn't describe myself' as a stoic. What I meant was, I'm not of the breed of Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius, or those who follow in their footsteps. I don't believe that all that suffices for a life of ethical virtue is 'knowledge of the Good' or some such Platonic notion.

And yet, on reflection, I realize that I accept the truth in stoicism. That is to say, I believe that there is something to know, which provides an objective basis or rationale for ethical conduct; only that 'something' falls short of what Socrates or Plato aimed for. (One of my ex-students reminded me that I once actually told him I was a stoic, which is interesting as I have no recollection of saying this.)

Iris Murdoch in her brilliant short monograph Sovereignty of Good (1970) makes a big play of the shortcomings of existentialist ethics, and the need to rediscover a Platonic notion of an objectively existing Good. I have no quarrel with that. What I'm saying is that fully responsible or 'authentic' action requires that we accept the heavy burden of responsibility for the values we choose to live by. You cannot distil those values from knowledge of the Good. There is nothing to know other than what we can discover through patient, factual investigation (here I am with Hume and the early Wittgenstein). But to be willing to conduct such an investigation — when faced with bewildering ethical choices and dilemmas — is a responsibility, and to a large extent an ethical responsibility.

'If it doesn't impact on me then why should I care,' is the ultimate question posed to ethics. A true existentialist would say that I choose to care and take responsibility for that choice. I don't think, realistically, that this is a choice. (Hence, I am not an existentialist.) It is about being a person, or being human: to look at the face of the other and never be moved, or successfully resist any temptation to be moved, is to put oneself outside human life altogether. I won't try to give a metaphysical spin on this. I am stating this as if it were a plain fact.

Now to the question: what happens to this 'burden of responsibility for the values we choose to live by' as one approaches death? All the big choices have been made, and one has accepted, taken responsibility, for those choices. I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I had not 'chosen relationship'. But I did, and I live with the consequences of that choice. I do sometimes feel, as Wesley does, a keen sense of being 'painted into a corner'. As a widower, with three daughters who still need a parent's practical and moral support, I don't have the range of choices I would have otherwise have had.

But this picture is completely wrong, if one interprets it as implying that there are no 'big' choices left, only little or insignificant ones. Of course, one can just walk over the wet paint and make a mess of things. I fully appreciate why Wesley would not consider that as a valid option. However, to stay in one's narrow corner is an existential choice. Maybe you've made some bad decisions in your life and now you're living with the painful consequences. You can to stay and face the music, or flee. And you have chosen to stay.

But I am going to assume that this is not the case for you. By and large, you are reasonably happy about the decisions that you have made.

The first point to make is a purely practical one: we don't know, for sure, what lies ahead for us. Not everyone gets to enjoy a tranquil old age. Tragedies and disasters have a way of disrupting one's cosy retirement plans. I won't enumerate all the ways in which this can happen. Imagine that this is 1936 and you are a Jew living in Vienna. Or it is 1945 and you and your family live in the vicinity of Hiroshima.

Or let's move things on a bit and take an extreme case. You are close to death. Physically, you are incapable of any movement apart from blinking in response to questions put to you. And someone asks, 'Do you forgive X for what they did?' And let's suppose, for the sake of this example, that what X did was really unforgivable, monstrous. But you still have that choice. Is it a small choice, or is it possibly one of the biggest choices you have ever made?

Or to strike an even more sombre note: Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) poses, as a philosophical question, what reasons are there to not commit suicide. There is no time in the length of a human life where that option no longer exists as a potential life choice.

One of the points I make early on in the Pathways Moral Philosophy program is that most of us, most of the time, never face really big ethical decisions. Our courage, for example, may never be fully tested. You might well ask whether one can be an existentialist when you live a life of comfort and ease — regardless of your age — where there are no scary or momentous choices, only pleasant ones.

In H.G. Wells' brilliant parable The Time Machine, the Eloi live like this. We can only see the Eloi as irresponsible children, unwilling to face the grim reality of their situation — easy meat for the Molochs. But how many persons do, in fact, live such a life of irresponsibility? That is, after all, the point about the self-satisfied bourgeoisie. 'You've never had it so good,' as Prime Minister Macmillan said. — But that was to a generation who had lived through the Second World War.

The biggest challenge for existentialists, or for those who 'see the truth' in existentialism is how to live when no important ethical choices ever seem to intrude on one's happy existence. I'm not saying that it's necessarily a bad thing that one is happy and contented. Ultimately, we can't choose the external circumstances in which we find ourselves, the events which intrude on our lives. This lack of momentous choices is a problem at any age, not just in old age.

Yet at the same time there is a part of me which wants to rebel in fury at the idea that anyone has the right to be contented. I don't just mean that the world is in a mess, in so many ways, and that you should be striving to the utmost and to the end of your days to do something about it. That's just one way. Equally strenuous and demanding would be the decision go back to college, study philosophy, say. Or, for someone in my situation, to look for another life partner. But to be a bit cynical about this — aren't these just so many strategies against boredom? Why this great effort? what difference does it make? You're going to die, anyway. — That's the question Camus asks.

Which brings me back to the one thing which I cannot get past. The one indubitable nugget of metaphysical fact: my existence. This is what existentialism is ultimately about. I am not 'some' person. I do not do what 'one' does. The choice — and there is always a choice — is here for me, now. That is what it means to say that 'I exist', in the sense in which this is an active verb rather than a merely tautological statement.

Eliminating the masses

2010-08-04T11:38:00.032+01:00

On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 09:21:20
Derrick asked this question:

With the rapid implementation of advanced automation, robotics and soon nanotechnologies will there still be a place for the human masses?

We have long since passed the point of sustainability, we pollute our ever shrinking supply of fresh water, deforest at accelerating rates and erode our agricultural land and every human disaster is serviced by emergency aid and the result is further breeding to add to the rescue mission next time.

For how long will the have continue to support the have not, will there still be a place for humanity's masses in the coming ages or are we in the process of eliminating ourselves?

It's unusual for me to be answering another question so quickly after posting a tentative answer (on human test tubes), but Ronny's question on Monday has put me in a mood which I'm having some difficulty shaking off.

In my answer to Ronny I said that I 'rather like looking into the abyss'. That is such a gob-smacking thing to say let alone mean. Did I mean it? Or was I just showing off? I feel as if I meant it. My mood is — quite buoyant.

How much can I do without? Work is piling up on my desk today, but I don't sense any strong ethical impulse to be getting on with it. Diogenes' question — remember Diogenes, the dog philosopher who lived in tub? — that question haunts me. I don't need any of this.

I've never had much money, but I could get by on a lot less than what I have. I don't own a car, don't go on holidays, keep one pair of shoes (whoever heard of a car, even the most expensive car, needing more than one set of tyres?). Computers would be more difficult to give up, but that wouldn't be too hard once I'd given up all that I need computers for.

Probably the hardest thing would be chocolate biscuits to have with my coffee. Or coffee — whoah, that's a thought!

OK, that's enough about me. What about the human race? What do we need? How much can we do without? Why do we need the masses?

Obviously, the world economy still requires a plentiful resource cheap labour but (as Marx allegedly foresaw) advances in technology will eventually make manual labour redundant. Imagine workforce of obedient robots who need nothing apart from a few drops of oil and a regular recharge. Well, that's pretty obvious.

Who are the 'masses'? Jose Ortega Y Gasset gives a pretty potent definition in his book Revolt of the Masses (1929). The main point to note is that one shouldn't make the mistake of identifying the masses with the 'have nots'. Ortega's typical 'mass man' is the self-satisfied bourgeois.

Get rid of them all, is the answer. Get rid of the have nots, for sure. But also get rid of the bourgeoisie. Who else? Anyone with an IQ under (hmm...) 135. That's a bit generous, I know; not enough to get into Mensa, but that's OK because we're eliminating Mensa members anyway (too smug and self-satisfied by half).

To be serious for one moment (as I'm trying to be, because it's a serious question): Here's a useful thought experiment. Imagine that human beings are the only intelligent life in the universe. I know that we're repeatedly told that the probability of alien intelligence is overwhelming — despite the complete lack of any concrete evidence — but it isn't a fact, it isn't something we know.

So, imagine we're all alone. Does that make you feel more important? Does it make you any less willing to let a few billions die? Not me. What about the survival of the human race. Surely, one would care about that. But why? Survive, for what purpose?

I don't know. That's the honest truth. I just don't know.

I can't think in such general terms. When I try, I lose all my bearings. There are persons whose survival, and happiness, I very much care about apart from my own survival and well being. Instead of starting at the 'big end' (the entire human race) and eliminating the ones whose survival doesn't seem to matter, maybe the thing to do is start at the other end, the small end, by writing a list of all those I do care about, all those who I would allow into the Ark, so to speak.

As each human being comes into focus, looks me in the eye, I feel as if I would have no choice but to let them in.

The solution to 'the world's problems' has been a topic of debate for a long while, certainly since Malthus wrote his Essay on the Principle of Population. Undoubtedly, technology must play an important part. But, as Derrick has so clearly seen, if we rely only on science and technology then there may very well come a time when human beings, or at any rate a large proportion of the human race, become simply redundant.

This isn't the place for a mealy-mouthed lecture on ethics. I parade my moral virtue for no man. So I will just say this. A heap of sand is made of individual grains. The masses are made of individual persons, and each person has a face. Whatever your ethical or political views may be, that is one fact which you should not allow yourself to forget.

Human test tubes

2010-08-02T11:31:00.040+01:00

On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 16:56:12
Ronny asked this question:

Human Test Tubes?

If this website is anything to go by depression appears to influence a lot of people into looking to philosophy to provide some answers to their issues with life. It appears I am one of those people although I am not naive enough to expect a definitive answer to any of my questions. I simply feel the need to express a thought that has dogged me since being offered medication for my depression.

My depression was explained to me, when initially diagnosed, as being due to low levels of certain chemicals within my body and medication would go some way to help correct this imbalance. Coming from a medical background up to graduate level, I was well aware of the complexities of human physiology. However, having had depression explained to me in such a manner I began to question whether everything we are as human beings is not a result of a series of complex chemical reactions? Light passes into my eye where a chemical reaction converts this to a signal passed to my brain where further chemical reactions occur and I am present with an image. Sometimes the images we perceive can produce what we describe as an 'emotion'. Could emotions therefore be seen as the end point of a chemical cascade? Are 'feelings' also end points of chemical processes? I hear a sound which is converted, via a mechanism within the ear, to a chemical reaction to produce electrical signals within the brain. Further chemical reactions branch away from this and the end point can be a stimulation of further physiology and a 'feeling' is produced. Does repetition reinforce a certain chemical pathway so that we develop the same 'feeling' or 'emotion' to the same stimulus? Is that how we come to 'like' or 'dislike' something?

These questions made me wonder whether it is ever truly possible to therefore control 'feelings' or 'emotions'? Once that chemical cascade starts can we influence it? Then again, while writing this I am having 'thoughts' that I feel I am controlling and if I expand my premise to the process of 'thinking' as being a chemical process occurring within the brain, am I not influencing these chemical reactions?

Once again, I don't feel naive enough to think I am the only person ever to have considered whether the body is not one large test tube full of complex chemical reactions with mind numbing interactions that will never be truly understood.

However, what do we become if we view ourselves in this way? Is our feeling of self or the belief that we make our own decisions in the way we interact with the world the result of a series of chemical processes?

The first thing I want to say to Roy is that I take the idea that depression and philosophy go together very seriously indeed.

I remember being told, many years ago, that if I continued with philosophy I would end up 'looking for the shortest rope'. That was by my uncle Jack. At the time, I thought Jack was probably wise enough to know that his own mental constitution wasn't suited to pondering the meaning of life. I can see his worried face even now. But I was different. I could handle it. I'd peeked into the abyss and it hadn't fazed me.

Then I recall that two of the lecturers who taught me when I was an undergraduate subsequently committed suicide. Maybe they thought they could handle seeing into the abyss, but they were wrong. — But that's just idle speculation, innit?

Actually, I rather like looking into the abyss. When I cast my eyes around this dingy world, the tawdry sideshows that human beings call 'culture', the abyss is the only thing with any real depth. Anxiety is the only real human emotion. (I think Freud said that.) But philosophy isn't just about plumbing the dizzy depths. It's about remembering and focusing. About being present. It can sometimes be a pleasurable activity (especially if you have a taste for Schadenfreude) but it's not something you do for pleasure.

So is Ronny right, that 'depression appears to influence a lot of people into looking to philosophy to provide some answers to their issues with life'? or did my Uncle Jack see deeper into the truth about these things? — And what the hell has any of this got to do with taking pills?

My chemical of choice is alcohol. Problem is, for medical reasons (chronic sarcoidosis, or maybe Sjogren's syndrome — the doctors don't seem to know which) I can't drink a single drop. I get a super-hangover that lasts for days. You know that feeling, when you just need a drink? I'm talking about someone who isn't in any way addicted to alcohol. I'd settle for one bottle of beer a week. I can't even have that without causing myself a lot more pain than pleasure.

At least I still have my coffee. I've been told it's bad for my condition, but I'm not aware of any particularly adverse effects. It helps me concentrate. (What do they know, anyway?)

They also say you shouldn't drink alcohol if you have a tendency towards depression. At any rate, you shouldn't drink alone. But social drinking is the best cure I can think of. If alcohol had never existed, the history of Western Philosophy would have been entirely different. Or maybe it wouldn't have happened at all. Read Plato's Symposium, if you don't believe me.

Getting back to pills. Ever since the first 'magic bullet' (Salversan, Dr Ehrlich's 'miraculous' cure for syphilis), an increasingly part of the chemicals industry has been dedicated to discovering new ever more potent formulations to add to the human test tube (nice image). Psychiatric disorders are exactly on a par with physical illnesses and disorders from the empirical standpoint. If it works with sufficiently benign side effects, that's all you want to know.

From this perspective, it's really a red herring to consider whether depressive people are that way because of a chemical imbalance. Even if their depression wasn't caused by a chemical imbalance (we'll get to what 'cause' means in a minute) a chemical cure can still work just as well. To repeat: we're only concerned with 'what works'.

I'm a good materialist, that is to say, I accept the minimal commitment for being a materialist, that mental events are supervenient on physical events. Anything else is up for grabs (a huge topic in the philosophy of mind which I don't what to get into now). Any thought, any feeling, any emotion is reflected in chemical or electro-chemical changes in my body. The direction of causation is the hard bit to figure out, but Ronny has half-seen this ('if I expand my premise to the process of 'thinking' as being a chemical process occurring within the brain, am I not influencing these chemical reactions?').

The bottom line is that you can interact with someone as a person, that means communicating, one person to another (Freud's 'talking cure'); or you can interact with them as a test tube. And that works too, sometimes. Some would argue, it works a lot better, certainly a lot faster.

This is all very circuitous (I'm sorry for that) but you'll see where this is going in a minute.

The other week, one of my old Mac laptops (a Powerbook 1400) died. Instead of starting up in the normal way with the 'happy Mac' logo, I got a picture of a floppy disk with a flashing question mark, then a black screen. I knew the hard drive was ancient and had probably had it. But I wasn't giving up. So I gave the laptop a sharp slap just to the left of the touchpad, where the hard drive is located. This time, the laptop started up, and has been working fine ever since.

We do this with people too. Sometimes, a sharp slap is just what a person needs. But doctors aren't allowed to do this, so they give a chemical slap instead.

What I'm working up to say is that this whole way of thinking about people and their mental trials and tribulations is totally wrong. To see that it is wrong, you have to get away from boneheaded empiricism and the idea that all that matters is that you 'feel OK' again. Freud understood. He saw his aim as transforming distressing psychological illness into 'generalized unhappiness'. When you do that, you have become free, your actions are your own rather than merely effects of your neurosis.

Freud said that in order to write, he needed to be in a mood of mild depression. The fact is, all genuinely creative work is painful. Gaiety and joy are wonderful things, but they're not ultimately real. At best, they are refreshing interludes that help strengthen our resolve, and they come as gifts. There's nothing more shallow or annoying than permanently joyful people.

So get away from the idea that all you need is to 'feel better'. There are other things you need, perhaps need more. (Perhaps philosophy is one of those things; or maybe psychotherapy — at least you'd have one real human relationship.) Accept the pain, adapt yourself to it, work with it. If you can find some depth in your life, whether from philosophy or some other activity, that is of far greater value.

Proofs in metaphysics

2010-07-26T11:44:00.042+01:00

On Tues, Jul 20, 2010 at 07:29:34
Vaidyanathan asked this question:

I am a newcomer to philosophy, and metaphysics in particular. I would like to know about the method of analysing and proving statements in metaphysics. Being a student of mathematics I am familiar with the axiomatic method. Is there any systematic method of proving statements in metaphysics?

Vaidyanathan has taken me on a trip down memory lane. How I wrangled with this!

Spinoza in his Ethics (1677) is probably the best example of a philosopher who explicitly uses Descartes' 'geometric method' for proving propositions in metaphysics. But you'd be totally wrong to think that Spinoza is any different from the majority of metaphysicians who eschew Spinoza's barbaric apparatus of axioms, definitions, propositions, scholia etc. etc.

You've got to start somewhere. Descartes starts with the 'Cogito'. Whatever proof you offer (and we'll get on to the question how there can possibly be 'proofs' in metaphysics in a minute) you need to assume something; or have you?

Thirty years ago, I showed this to my harassed thesis supervisor John McDowell. He was predictably nonplussed:

1. I begin with nothing: only an unspecified commitment, a pure question mark, a certain mental attitude. I want to tell the truth in a true way, before I even have any truths to tell; to grasp the nature of ultimate reality while reality itself presents no point of entry to its innermost circle; to forget all that I have learned and begin this time without a beginning, empty-handed and empty-headed.

It gets worse:

2. The dialectic is pure impulse to movement; and it is omnivorous. Everything serves as raw material, including its own self. When pure movement feeds upon pure movement, something may indeed arise out of nothing: the dialectic becomes conscious of itself and begins to construct its net.

Finally:

3. In metaphysics, the truth wholly ceases to be true when told in a false way. The activities of the misguided thinker issue, neither in partial truth nor partial falsehood. They have no issue. From the point of view of ultimate reality the activities remain confined within themselves; they fail to acquire an external reference...

(I hope you're following this.)

...For to 'begin with nothing' means rejecting the 'matter in hand' and the 'common purpose'. Metaphysics is not a 'subject' concerning which there may be partial agreement or disagreement. One simply refuses to understand 'results' which the dialectic cannot be made to generate entirely through its own resources.

It's a wonder that I ever succeeded in writing my D.Phil thesis. Needless to say, this version of Chapter 1 didn't make it into the final draft.

The thing is, Vaidyanathan, I know exactly what it was I was trying to do. I really thought this was possible. You start without any assumptions. Ground zero. Nada. Then you spin the dialectic, say 'Abracadabra' and 'something' emerges out of 'nothing'.

(I've tried this exercise of retracing my steps before, in the Glass House Philosopher, Notebook II, page 9. Disappointingly, the attempt fizzles out after a few pages.)

However, there's nothing wrong with starting again. What was I trying to do?

Let's get back on course. You're a mathematician, so you're familiar with mathematical proofs. Here's a famous proof invented by the Ancient Greeks long before anyone thought of axiomatizing arithmetic.

To prove: The square root of 2 is irrational.

1. Assume (for the sake of reductio) that the square root of 2 is rational.

2. Therefore the square root of 2 can be expressed as the fraction m/n, where m and n have no common factor.

3. Squaring both sides of the equation, 2 = m²/n².

4. Therefore m² = 2 n².

5. Therefore m² is even.

6. Therefore m is even.

7. If m is even, then m is 2k for some number k.

8. Therefore (substituting 2k for m) 2 = 4k²/n².

9. Therefore 2n² = 4k².

10. Therefore n² = 2k².

11. Therefore n² is even.

12. Therefore n is even.

13. If m and n are both even, then they have a common factor, viz. 2.

14. But this is a contradiction because we assumed that in m/n, m and n have no common factor.

15. Therefore the square root of 2 cannot be expressed as m/n where m and n have no common factor.

16. Therefore the square root of 2 is irrational.

As I said, this proof is familiar to any mathematician. But what I want you to try to do is picture what is going on in your mind, as someone who doesn't know that the square root of 2 is irrational, as you work through the proof step by step. Remember the first time you learned this proof (and imagine what you would have thought if you hadn't been taught in school that the square root of 2 is an irrational number). Or picture the (unknown) Greek mathematician who discovered it.

Now, I'm going to show you another proof. A direct quote this time. (I've just interpolated numbered steps.)

Let us imagine the following case.

1. I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation. To this end I associate it with the sign 'S' and write this sign in a calender for every day on which I have the sensation.

2. — I will remark first of all that a definition of the sign cannot be formulated.

3. But still I can give myself a kind of ostensive definition.

4. — How? Can I point to the sensation?

5. Not in the ordinary sense.

6. But I speak, or write the sign down, and at the same time I concentrate my attention on the sensation — and so, as it were, point to it inwardly.

7. — But what is this ceremony for? For that is all it seems to be! A definition surely serves to establish the meaning of a sign.

8. — Well, that is done precisely by the concentration of my attention; for in this way I impress on myself the connexion between the sign and the sensation.

9. — But 'I impress it on myself' can only mean: this process brings it about that I remember the connexion right in the future.

10. But in the present case I have no criterion of correctness.

11. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me is right.

12. And that only means that here we can't talk about 'right'.

L. Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations para. 258

On the face of it, there are notable differences between Wittgenstein's reductio ad absurdum of the notion of a 'private object' and the proof by the unknown Greek mathematician. But I would argue that these are superficial. In his famous para. 258, as well as the paragraphs leading up to and following it, Wittgenstein uses all his rhetorical gifts to get inside the head of someone who thinks that the notion of a 'private language' is possible. If you take all the extra trappings away, you get a 'proof' that is two, or at most three lines long. Even so, exactly the same thing is happening as in the arithmetical case.

My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.

L. Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations para. 464

I can write down, 'The square root of 2 = m/n' but what I am writing down is impossible. It cannot be true. However, it takes a proof to see this. Prior to discovering the proof, you don't see it. The nonsense is disguised. Maybe (as the Greeks probably did), you spend hours and hours looking for a fraction which correctly represents the square root of 2, not realizing that all the time you were chasing a chimera. That is exactly what Wittgenstein says philosophers are doing, who put forward theories of the mind according to which feelings and sensations are 'private objects'.

Thousands of miles of ink have been spilled expounding, or defending, or attacking Wittgenstein's 'private language argument'. I'm not going to add anything to that now, except to say that I believe (as I believed 30 years ago) that this is the most important argument in the whole of metaphysics.

As I once described it, the argument is like a 'metaphysical wall'. You see a wall, blocking the path of your thoughts. You imagine that there must be some way round the wall, or under it, or through it. But there is not. 'You reach the wall, only to find you are facing the other way.'

Just as we can tease out the assumptions, the 'axioms' behind the theorems of arithmetic (as Peano attempted to do) so I'm sure that there are plenty of assumptions or axioms to tease out if you want to formalize your intuitive grasp of what metaphysics is, that is to say, what it is to seek a 'definition of reality' (or 'Being qua being' in Aristotle's sense). But it would be a mistake to think that the results of metaphysics therefore 'derive from axioms'. They do not. The arise through the determined attempt to think whatever is thinkable, to the ultimate extent and wherever that may take us.

Metaphysics progresses by demonstrating what is not thinkable. Metaphysics shows us that the things we thought were thinkable are not thinkable. It seeks to 'make the nonsense manifest'. It is tempting to assume (and here's a possible 'metaphysical axiom' if you want it) that whatever emerges from this exercise unscathed is thinkable. But we can never know this for sure. And so, just like mathematics, there is no end to the discovery of the 'truths of metaphysics'.

Semantics of 'except'

2010-07-20T14:03:00.035+01:00

On Tues, Jul 20, 2010 at 08:36:37
Roy asked this question:

I have trouble understanding what people mean when they use a phrase with the word 'exception'. To me it sounds like a contradiction. So my question has two parts:

A) Is using the term 'exception' ever legitimate?

B) Does the term 'except' usually contradict the general rule that comes before it?

For example, All ice cream should be taxed, except vanilla.

It seems that the quantifier 'all' is false if a member is excluded.

For example, All students passed the final exam except Roy.

Seems to me this means only Roy failed the final exam and the quantifier 'all' makes the sentence false.

Please help me make sense of the term 'exception'. Thanks for your help.

I am going to treat Roy's question as a problem for truth-conditional semantics. Grammarians, who professionally are required to have a little more respect for natural language 'as it is spoken' might respond differently.

The modern wave of truth-conditional semantics was launched by the work of Donald Davidson in the late 60's, beginning with his seminal article 'Truth and Meaning' (1967). Davidson was merely continuing the project started by Frege with his revolutionary Begriffschrift, and continued by the early Wittgenstein, Russell and Tarski.

Davidson reformulated the task for a semantics of natural language — based upon Frege's ground-breaking invention of first-order predicate calculus — which aimed to satisfy two requirements: (1) to explain how it is that a speaker, using their knowledge of a finite number of words or semantic units, is able to generate a potentially infinite number of meaningful sentences; (2) make explicit the logical entailments between sentences which are only implicit in natural language.

Applied to the notion of 'except', what we need to explain is how it is possible for a speaker to use this term consistently in any number of sentences which they have never used or encountered before, and how they are able to recognize the logical implications of a sentence containing the word 'except'.

The logical analysis represents the speaker's implicit knowledge. What exactly it means to attribute implicit knowledge to a speaker is itself a problem in the philosophy of language, but as it affects truth-conditional semantics generally, I won't develop it here.

Now here comes the crunch: if you can do this, if you can give an analysis which satisfies Davidson's two requirements, then Davidson would say it really doesn't matter too much if the analysis which you offer of the idiom doesn't look at all like something that an ordinary speaker, unversed in the symbolism of first-order predicate calculus, would recognize.

This is all rather general. Let's apply this idea to Roy's case.

I can see why Roy thinks that it is odd to say something like, 'All the students passed, except Roy who failed.' If they all passed, then Roy passed. This follows logically from a basic rule of inference which any speaker competent with the term 'all' recognizes. But we just said that Roy failed. He didn't pass. Therefore Roy passed and Roy didn't pass. In other words, to say that all the students passed except Roy entails a logical contradiction.

Or does it?

Here is a first shot at translating the statement 'All the students passed, except Roy', into first-order predicate calculus:

(x)(((x is a student & x is not Roy) → x passed) & ((x is a student & x is Roy) → x failed))

'For all x, if x is a student and x isn't Roy, then x passed; if x is a student and x is Roy, then x failed.'

This seems OK. Let's try to apply it to the vanilla example:

(x)(((x is ice cream & x is not vanilla) → x is taxable) & ((x is ice cream and x is vanilla) → x is not taxable))

'For all x, if x is non-vanilla ice cream then x is taxable; if x is vanilla ice cream then x is not taxable.'

This is fine so far as it goes but it seems to leave out a rather important aspect of the meaning of 'except', which any competent speaker would recognize. When we say 'all... except... ' we are pointing out a relatively infrequent exception to a generalization, which otherwise holds. 'All trains into London St Pancras are running normally today, except from Derby and Chesterfield.' If the announcer had gone on to list all the trains into London St Pancras bar one or two, then the statement would be regarded as false, or at best, deliberately misleading.

Exceptions are in the minority. This is an important part of what we mean when we use the term 'except', and any logical analysis which fails to recognize this is inadequate. If all the students except Roy had failed, then you wouldn't say (unless you were being cruel), 'All the students passed — except John, Mary, Christopher, Bob, Susan...'.

Closely connected with the use of the term 'except' is the quantifier, 'most'. 'Most of the candidates passed the exam.' Or, 'All the candidates passed, except Roy and Susan.' (We sometimes loosely say, 'Most of the students passed, except Roy and Susan'. But this is confusing when you think about it.)

But how do we evaluate what counts as a 'majority' or 'most'? Is it more than 50%? more than 60%? Can the threshold change between different contexts? 'Most blood supplied for transfusions in the UK has been tested for Hepatitis C.' That better had better be 99.999% or the Minister for Health has a potential scandal on his hands.

Various attempts have been made to give a truth-conditional semantics for 'most', although I don't know of any particular analysis that has been generally accepted. To allow a vague term into logic itself would have caused great affront to Frege, who saw natural language as unavoidably deficient and lacking the purity and precision of logic. The fact is that ordinary speakers exercise refined judgement in deciding exactly when and how to use terms like 'except' and 'most' and their logical implications. This ability is one that is, at best, inadequately explained by the procrustean formulae of first-order predicate calculus.

— So much the worse, some would say, for truth-conditional semantics.

Pragmatism, induction, and belief in God

2010-07-13T10:56:00.013+01:00

On Tues, Jul 13, 2010 at 02:50:59
Lucy asked this question:

If pragmatic considerations show it is irrational not to believe in the principle of induction, do they also show it is irrational not to believe in God?

Mmm, it looks like Lucy is asking us to do her homework for her. This has all the hallmarks of an assignment or essay question. But unlike some we receive on Ask a Philosopher, this one is not that bad. How much help my answer is going to be is another question.

Two things ought to scream out at you when you see the phrase 'pragmatic justification of induction' (by the way, you'll find loads of pages if you search for this in Google):

The first point is, how on earth am I going to be persuaded by a pragmatic argument that belief in induction 'works in practice' or 'leads to practical benefits' if I'm not already committed to induction? In that respect, a pragmatic justification of induction is in exactly the same quandary as an inductive justification of induction. Just because induction works fine for you, or just because it has worked for me in the past, is no reason for me to believe that it will work for me now unless I have already accepted that inductive reasoning is reasonable.

The second point has to do with the — allegedly modest — idea of a merely 'pragmatic' belief. Suppose I accept that induction 'works' (or has worked for me in the past, or has worked for you); is that supposed to be a true statement, or only something which it is useful to believe? If I state that it is merely useful to believe the statement just made, is that a claim to truth, or am I merely saying that it is useful to believe that it is useful to believe... and so on.

This is all very well covered ground — as you will discover if you do an internet search. In any event, the idea of a 'pragmatic justification of induction' has at least two major points of uncertainty/ instability before we even go on to consider the even more explosive idea of an inductive proof of the existence of God.

(In my last post, I described myself as a 'pragmatist with a small 'p''. Perhaps, one should make clear that the background to this question is most definitely Pragmatism with a big 'P', I'm talking in particular about the philosophies of C.S. Peirce and William James.)

The Pragmatist may object at this point that I have willfully misinterpreted the pragmatic case for induction. We are not concerned with anything so abstract as the 'definition of truth' (although this more ambitious thesis is what James attempted in Pragmatism, 1907), but rather the question of how one ought to behave, or, equivalently, what makes behaviour 'rational' or 'irrational'. When I avoid putting my hand in a pot of boiling water in order to stir the spaghetti, I am not considering what would be a 'true statement' concerning the effect of a temperature of 100 degrees Centigrade on living human tissue. Rather, I am simply avoiding doing something which I know to be harmful. The knowledge in question is practical knowledge. It is something you just don't do, without having to think about it first.

We navigate our way through through the world, avoiding myriads of dangers large and small, choosing intelligently without pausing to reflect on that choice. This is part of what it is to 'be rational'. You wouldn't call someone rational who only did the rational thing when prompted to think about it, but the rest of the time behaved in a more or less random way.

This also disposes of the objection that a pragmatic justification of induction presupposes inductive reasoning. The whole point of the pragmatic 'turn' is to halt the threatened regress of an inductive argument for preferring induction. At a certain point, thinking comes to an end and we just act. The capacity to learn from experience (which is basically all that induction amounts to) is an intrinsic part of the capacity to make intelligent choices, whether or not these choices are reflected upon.

I'm prepared to buy all this, just for the sake of Lucy's question. I should add, however, that I don't really like the idea that induction is something we just 'have' to believe, come what may. There are principles which it definitely pays to believe even though they are apparently counter-inductive. One is Sod's Law: If something can go wrong, it will go wrong. If you estimate the chance of something going wrong with your plan, your estimate — however rationally based, however carefully you have sifted all the relevant inductive considerations — will always be too optimistic. Another well attested counter-inductive principle (which I don't have a name for) is that Good Things Never Last. On the basis of induction, rationally it oughtn't to make a difference whether you are onto a 'Good Thing' or not, but in practice it just does.

But maybe that just shows what a pessimist I am. Maybe (to be really clever, if not cute about this) you could make an inductively based case for pessimism, on the grounds that it offers a necessary rational corrective to the natural human tendency to be over-optimistic.

However, this is merely delaying the real question: whether an useful analogy or, better still, inference can be drawn between a pragmatic justification of induction and a pragmatic justification of theism.

On the face of it, there's a huge disanalogy, a massive non-sequitur. You say belief in God works for you. I say non-belief in God works for me. If you didn't believe in God, you say, your life just wouldn't be worth living. My response is that if I believed in God, my life would become hell. There would be no place far away enough or deep enough to hide.

Instead of the happy-clappy belief that 'God will always love me' or 'God is on my side', I prefer the honesty of good old-fashioned Catholicism. When you die, you can expect to spend 1000 years in Purgatory (according to one book I came across — it's a grimly fascinating subject for debate), going over every aspect of your life, inch by inch, until you are thoroughly cleansed and prepared for everlasting life in Heaven. Lovely.

The idea of being a 'God-fearing man' has this aspect of truth about it. As Geach (a Roman Catholic) says in his defence of Divine Command theory (see my post on Plato's Euthyphro) to defy God is the very definition of insanity. For my part, I couldn't live with that fear looming over me. The fire and brimstone preachers had the right idea: What the Hell are you smiling for?

However, you will say that I have just conceded the Pragmatist's case, by demonstrating that I am prepared to argue over the question of belief in God, on the ground of what is or is not the most weighty pragmatic consideration. How that argument is resolved is a mere point of detail. — I do not concede. I am expressing my personal feelings. Unlike the Pragmatist, I don't consider for one moment that my personal feelings constitute an argument let alone a 'rational' argument. So far as the existence of God is concerned, there is no case. There is no doubt where the onus of justification lies: it is with the theist, not the atheist.

For the sake of argument, however, let's put aside the last point. Suppose it were true that the question of the existence or non-existence of God is one to be settled by pragmatic considerations. To answer Lucy's question (finally!) there is still a huge disanalogy with the pragmatic justification of induction because (notwithstanding my somewhat tongue-in-cheek case for counter-inductive principles like Sod's Law) there really isn't a meaningful debate about whether or not we should accept induction. The genuine counter-inductivists died out long ago.

On the idea of international law

2010-07-05T12:19:00.008+01:00

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 17:34:19
Penny asked:

This is a political philosophy question about the incompatibility of national sovereignty and international institutions such as the UN, EU, treaty commitments and the legitimacy (or not) of enforcement mechanisms. I'm sorry it's so long.

For my entire adult life I have been a strong supporter of the UN and international law as the best hope to prevent and mitigate wars and help bring about, if not perfect global peace, harmony and justice, at least a reduction of conflict and more peaceful coexistence. I dislike nationalism, and particularly superpatriotism, which seem to me one of the principal causes of conflict, and have looked forward to the decreasing importance of nation states.

Now, since I've developed an amateur interest in philosophy and ethics, I discover that national sovereignty is seen by many as key to human progress and civilisation since at least the Enlightenment; that it is inalienable and by definition supreme, meaning that states cannot relinquish any part of their sovereignty, thereby destroying any claim to legitimacy of international law (and the courts to enforce it). I read, too, that while states have the authority to make treaties and sign up to conventions if they wish, they can also break them at will if that suits, and that no other state or institution has (or can have) legitimate authority to prevent them, or penalise them for doing so (or even, it seems, have grounds to criticise them, since states are not moral agents).

So when those of us who were against the Iraq war complained that it was a war of aggression, or we cite the Geneva Conventions (rather than basic morality) on the treatment of prisoners, or the Law of the Sea when unarmed passengers are killed on ships in international waters, or the discriminatory application of the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty, or we welcome the establishment of the ICC, apparently we haven't a philosophical leg to stand on.

If nothing short of a world state (inevitably oppressive and therefore far from desirable) can legitimately override national sovereignty, what is to be done? Are we stuck forever with a Hobbesian state of nature in the international arena, where the strongest countries can generally expect to prevail over the wishes and needs of the weakest, backed by the threat of superior brute force?

I was warned that studying philosophy would force me to rethink some of my fundamental beliefs, which was true and is stimulating, but I'm finding this very hard to come to terms with. Is there a way round or over the sovereignty stumbling block to greater global justice, a philosophical route to legitimacy for what I think of as progressive international institutions?

The question of how the actions of nation states can be subject to law is the most urgent question of our times. It is, above all, a practical question. If the United Nations and the Security Council are not sufficiently effective to deter or prevent wars of aggression then we should be figuring out ways of making them more effective. Which is of course exactly what political thinkers and political leaders have been doing. If we succeeded, would it really matter if this went against some treasured philosophical principle? I don't think so.

Sovereignty is essential, as Hobbes argued in Leviathan because in the absence of a sovereign to whom one cedes the power to enforce law, there can be no justice and no law except the law of the jungle, the war of 'all against all'. But Hobbes also argued with perfect consistency that a monarch, ruling alone, is the only effective sovereign. As soon as you introduce limitations to the power of the monarch — a parliament for example — the problems that the idea of a sovereign was introduced to solve break out all over again.

The problem is encapsulated in the famous example of the Prisoners' Dilemma. Of all the many game-theoretic strategies that have been explored, Hobbes' solution is the only one that guarantees the an agreement or contract will be honoured by both parties — because they are answerable, not just to one another but to a third party who has the unfettered power to punish infractions with lethal force. The third party, once appointed, cannot be unappointed. That's what ensures no backsliding on the deal.

No-one accepts this today in the political arena. Why not? Logically, Hobbes' argument is unassailable. To absolutely guarantee peace, the humble acquiescence of every subject to the law of the land, nothing less than the absolute power of a dictator is required. The problem is, kings and dictators have an awkward tendency to behave in way which is not necessarily aimed at the good of their subjects. (But that's OK, because they will face the judgement of God.)

Having made the experiment, human nations have settled for less. We have a political system — I'm talking about liberal democracy although you could say similar things about other political systems — which works for the most part in maintaining the peace of the nation. Bad things still happen. There are political stalemates when we need urgent political action; the police force struggles to stay on top of the crime rate; civil disobedience and strikes throw their spanner in the works.

'Thank goodness that they do,' would be a reasonable response. Can you imagine what kind of state it would be, where the decree of the ruler was absolute, where every crime and misdemeanour was instantly punished? Vid screens in every room just like in 1984. You drop a piece of chewing gum on the pavement and Whooof! off you go in a puff of smoke. (Although I know a few people who would agree to that.)

So my argument would be, if we are prepared to compromise the logic of Hobbes' response to the prisoners' dilemma for the sake of practicality, then what this means, in effect, is an admission that the idea of a 'sovereign' is a fiction. It may be, as many believe, an indispensable fiction, but it is a fiction nonetheless. I recognize the law of the land, by and large, but there are cases where my conscience, or just urgent practical need, overrides respect for the law. One drives through the occasional red light.

The United Nations is a building in New York. It is also a fiction. It doesn't exist except in the minds of the political leaders who founded it and the delegates who attend it. Belief that the UN can work is necessary in order to make it work. And it has worked, by and large; at least one can argue that world affairs would have been in a far worse state without it.

There isn't a question of what may or may not 'legitimately' override national sovereignty from a philosophical standpoint. If a resolution is passed by the UN, then it is legitimate, because that's just what the member states have subscribed to. Of course, the real world being what it is, resolutions fail to be implemented, just as national laws fail to be observed. Punishments and sanctions only deter in proportion to their severity: that's a problem for national law as well as for international law.

But can't philosophers figure something out? Insofar as this is a problem for game theory, you need game theorists; insofar as this is a problem of practical politics, you need political scientists. Maybe somewhere in there, is a role for utopian dreamers. (The League of Nations was once a utopian dream. It's failure led to the UN.)

The most intractable problems of our time require more than a number-crunching or logic-crunching response; they require originality, creativity. Something new, at any rate. I do wonder whether there is any meaningful role for political philosophy. You want 'philosophical legitimacy' for international law? You've got it. What we want is just to make international law more effective, without it hurting too much. Maybe that just shows the colour of my philosophical creed (for want of a better word, call it pragmatism with a small 'p').

Putting oneself before another

2010-06-21T11:14:00.032+01:00

On Thur, Jun 3, 2010 at 19:32:13
Lois asked this question:

There are situations where the pursuit of our own happiness and peace of mind conflicts with that of another. Must we always put the interests of others before our own? Is there any justification for pursuing one's own welfare at the expense of someone who stands in the way of our goal?

This question came in a while ago, and I wasn't going to answer it. Other Ask a Philosopher panel members have already had a go, and I couldn't really see that I had anything to add. (Lois didn't provide an email address so she'll have to wait — rather a long time, I'm afraid — until the next series of Questions and Answers is posted.)

But something happened to make me look at this question again. (It's not something I want to talk about here.) The thought occurred to me that pursuing this question from Lois can take you into a very dark place indeed.

But let's start off with the more obvious points that a moral philosopher would make.

I can think of two clear cases, which few would dispute, where in the one case it was perfectly reasonable to put oneself before another; while in the other case one has a clear obligation to put the other person before oneself.

Let's say you are one of two shortlisted candidates for a well paid executive position, waiting to be interviewed. This is the first time you have reached the short list after scores of unsuccessful job applications.

Your stomach churns as you realize how much depends on how you perform in this interview. A divorced mother of three. You are behind with your mortgage payments, and you and your children are threatened with eviction from the home they have lived in all of their lives. Your age is against you, and it was only pure luck that you managed to get this far in the selection process.

The other candidate catches your eye. 'How long do you think we're going to have to wait?' You mumble something in reply. But the other woman needs to talk so you listen. You listen with a growing sense of amazement to her story about her husband who cheated on her with his personal trainer, her subsequent divorce, her three young children and how far she is behind with her mortgage payments. She could be you. She has as much to gain, or to lose, as you have yourself.

What should you do? There's no question. You go for the job. In the interview you fight for your happiness and the happiness of your children. You fight for all your lives.

Our moral intuitions tell us — at least, my moral intuitions tell me — that in a situation of fair, or even not so fair competition such as the one I have described, there has to be a winner and a loser. You have every right to strive to win with all your might, even though as a necessary consequence the other must lose. Until human beings finally succeed in creating Utopia, that's the nature of the society we live in.

I've painted this in black and white colours, but it is not just an isolated, extreme example. There are many, many ways in which human beings have to fight for their happiness and peace of mind, knowing that there will inevitably be winners and losers in the game of life. Of course, you can do your best to help those less fortunate, give generously to charity and good causes. But if it was wrong to compete in the first place, then charity and good deeds would merely be a salve to ease one's guilty conscience.

In the example I have just given, it could be objected that I was unfairly raising the stakes as each candidate was naturally concerned for the well-being of her children. I don't think that's the crucial point, however. My original idea was to have two not-so young but single Philosophy PhDs competing for an academic post. (I can sympathize, but not that many would.) Exactly the same considerations apply. One is destined for a life in academia and the realization of all his or her dreams, the other will end up as a bank manager. And both believe this is the very last chance for either of them.

But what about a parent's duty to one's child? Isn't that the clearest case where one has an obligation to put the happiness of others before one's own? The very definition of a 'bad mother' or 'bad father' is a person who refuses to do this. Again, I'm relying on moral intuition, but I expect the majority of parents would agree. It's a cliché, but clichés are often true, that parenthood is a sustained and bloody exercise in self-sacrifice.

Well, I could go on to talk about all the cases in between, where we are pulled both ways, towards wanting to say that one has an obligation to put the other first, and saying that one is justified in putting oneself first. Or, I could delve into moral theory in order to account for these alleged intuitions: what would a utilitarian say? or a Kantian deontologist? or a virtue ethicist? or an evolutionary biologist?

But I leave that as an exercise.

What concerns me is a disturbing vibe that I get with this question. Our 'happiness and peace of mind' is at stake. What would one not do for the sake of one's happiness and peace of mind? As a parent, you can't be happy if your children are unhappy. And if there really is no prospect that one will ever attain happiness, wouldn't it be better just to end it all?

And to think that you could be happy, were it not for the one person standing in your way!

What you would say to the the mother of three who fails to get the job is that it isn't the end of the world. OK, so you get evicted from your home. That's terrible. But people survive worse, and they end up making good lives for themselves. Or to the disappointed PhD, one would remind them that they still have their life ahead of them, there are other ways to pursue one's interest in philosophy besides paid employment in a university.

When do we not think this? When are we absolutely and utterly convinced that unless XYZ happens, our happiness and peace of mind will be gone forever, never to return? Love would be pretty high on the list. But not the only item. It could be a political cause that you have dedicated your whole life to. Or something as banal and unidealistic as the mistaken belief that you can only be happy having lots and lots of money.

Which brings us to that dark place, which popular films and TV dramas love to explore.

In Lois' question, there was a nice vagueness in the idea of doing something 'at the expense' of another. One naturally assumes that we are dealing with a tit-for-tat situation. What one stands to win, the other stands to lose. But there's no logical reason for this assumption. — That is the way a murderer thinks too.

On the existence of holes

2010-06-14T11:04:00.076+01:00

On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 02:46:58
Asia asked this question:

Do holes really exist or are they pockets of non-existence?

Whoa! I know someone who would love this question — my erstwhile student and Pathways mentor Brian Tee. Brian got his MA in Philosophy from The University of Sheffield and now owns The Porter Bookshop in Sheffield — a nice job for a philosopher. I have to apologize to Asia in advance because Brian would have been able to give a much better answer than me. But I can only try my best.

I remember having a three hour discussion on the philosophical topic of holes with Brian while downing pints of Easy Rider at The Sheaf View pub, just up the road from my office. John Riley, another ex-student who designed the banner for The Ten Big Questions was also there. The discussion was sparked off when Brian pointed to the absence of beer in his glass and reminded me that it was my turn to buy a round.

How can an absence be something? As any beer drinker knows, the absence of beer in your glass is a very serious matter which needs to be rectified as soon as possible. Somehow, that got us onto the topic of holes.

Let's say that holes undoubtedly exist. Then what is a hole?

Consider a hole in a wall. (I think that was my bright idea.) A hole is something you can climb through: an opportunity (if you are trying to get to the other side of the wall) or a threat (if you are trying to prevent someone from getting to the other side of the wall). However, a hole — say, a gap in the brickwork — isn't a hole in the wall if it is too small (then it's a crack — another concept that one could look at), or if air is blasting through at a sufficiently powerful rate, or if it contains a guillotine designed to chop you in half if you try to climb through.

Chicken wire is full of 'holes', but a hole in a chicken wire fence is a matter of concern to the farmer, especially if there are foxes about. Here again, what does or does not count as a hole is relative to the function or purpose of a given item.

Is a hole a thing? Consider the holes in Emmental ('Swiss') cheese. If you bought some Emmental at the supermarket and then discovered that it didn't have any holes, you'd have the right to complain: the cheese may taste the same, but it isn't Emmental without the holes. You'd miss the peculiar pleasure of exploring the holes with your tongue as you bite into the cheese. Visual appearance is also very important. In this and in many other cases, holes are a positive aesthetic feature.

However, so far we are merely skirting round the issue. Talk of the 'functional' or 'aesthetic' role of holes merely underlines the reasons why we take a practical interest in these strange objects. The philosophical question, however, is what holes are, ontologically speaking.

From the point of view of logic, to say that a hole is a 'something' is to assert that it is an 'entity with an identity' in P.F. Strawson's sense: an object of reference whose persistence and identity conditions are sufficiently well defined to enable a speaker and hearer to identify it as the 'same again' on different occasions and say things about it.

One of the things we discussed in the pub was Sartre's discussion of 'the absence of Pierre'. I'm waiting in a coffee bar for Pierre but Pierre hasn't shown up. Wherever I look, Pierre is not in my field of vision. In terms of Gestalt psychology, I perceive the cafe not just as general scenery but as a ground on which I am expecting a figure to appear. All the details fade into a more or less uniform blur. And yet what I perceive is not merely a blur but something positive, Pierre's absence.

To perceive a hole is to perceive a gestalt, a 'figure' on a 'ground'. But, equally, to perceive the absence of a hole is to perceive a gestalt. The hole searched for is not there.

Frege or Russell would say that the absent Pierre isn't a peculiar kind of object inhabiting the 'realm of non-existence'. Rather, the statement, 'Pierre is not here' can be analysed in first-order predicate calculus as, 'For all x, if x is in the cafe, then x is not equal to Pierre', or, analysing proper names à la Quine, 'For all x, if x is in the cafe then x does not have the property of being-Pierre'.

However, this response still fails to address the question why absences, or holes, are philosophically interesting, and indeed why Sartre sees the very notion of 'nothing' or 'nothingness' as having deep phenomenological or metaphysical significance. You don't have to believe that holes are 'made of' a special kind of non-existent stuff, or think of holes as 'pockets of non-existence' in order to sense that holes are somehow problematic and disturbing.

Assume that a hole is, as stated above, an 'entity with an identity'. Holes which meet this criterion are like things, and yet they lack many of the essential qualities of things. Holes lack the defining properties of a 'substance' in Aristotle's sense. In Lockean terms, holes do not have 'primary qualities' from which their 'secondary qualities' flow.

And yet holes are like things in that they have a natural life, a natural history. Consider the hole in a sock, which starts off as a broken thread and then gradually grows and grows until your heel sticks through. The holes in Emmental are produced by a biochemical reaction, their distribution and size is carefully controlled by the precise conditions under which the cheese is manufactured. And yet they are not made of anything. They contain pure carbon dioxide but they are not made of carbon dioxide, any more than a hole in a brick wall is made of air.

Just like physical objects, holes can combine and merge. Two small holes in a sock can gradually grow until they merge and become a bigger hole. Equally, holes can be divided up. Adding a few strands of wire fixes the 'hole' in the chicken wire fence. From one point of view, the larger hole has been divided up into smaller holes, but, as we have seen, the smaller holes are not holes in the fence, which as a result of the timely repair is once more an effective fence, sufficient to keep the foxes out.

In the pub we also considered the idea that the edge or rim of the hole constitutes is actual, physical presence. It is true that in describing the precise dimensions of the rim you have described the dimensions of the hole. And yet logically the rim, qua physical stuff, cannot be a constituent element or part of the hole, because you can fill the hole in (e.g. a hole in a wall) without in any way changing the material properties of the the rim. Equally, if I mark a chalk circle where I plan to cut a hole in the wall, I have defined a potential rim which in a sense actually exists (as physical material) and yet does not yet exist — just as for the sculptor the statue already 'exists' in the uncarved stone.

— Come to think of it, what is it that one 'sees' in the hunk of stone?

Last week, I was kicking around possible designs for a new web page, ISFP Publishing. The idea is to help unknown authors promote books on philosophy. Somehow, I gravitated towards the idea that the background should look like old paper. I found something very nice on Flickr. But still, there seemed to be something missing. Then the idea came to me — from I don't know where — that what the page needed was a fly, crawling across the paper. The people I've shown the page to agreed that the fly was just right and nothing else would do. But how did I know this, from just staring at the space where a fly was not? What did I see?

However, I think there's something else that needs to be emphasized, something to do specifically with our psychological attitude to holes in particular, which does not apply to absences or lacks generally.

As a matter of physical fact, our bodies are porous (from the Greek poros, passage or pore). The human body is made of, defined by, its holes. (Something about this reminds me of Tantric philosophy.) Through these passages and channels, information and physical material flows in and out. The miracle of reproduction is the most impressive example.

The very notion of perception involves the idea of holes or channels whereby information is conveyed into our minds from the external world, through the eyes, ears, nose. To be receptive to experience is essential to our connectedness with the world and our surrounding environment, as indeed it is to our capacity to communicate with one another. Yet equally important is the role of holes in relation to physical needs, the need to breathe, eat etc.

Last time, I strayed into Freudian territory in talking about 'male' and 'female' aspects of the impulse to philosophize. Leaving aside the differences between the sexes, the discovery that one has an anus as well as a mouth, must be a momentous event for the human infant.

All of which leads me to conclude that what makes the topic of holes so enticing is not just one thing but a potent combination of factors.

— Well, those are some more or less jumbled thoughts. Holes exist. But there is no single, definitive way of stating what makes something a hole. It depends on your point of view, or interest. And I've tried to explain why holes are so 'interesting'. If there is a core or real essence to the 'philosophical problem of holes', I don't think I've found it. Maybe you will, Asia, if you keep looking. Or ask Brian.

Is anatomy destiny?

2010-06-04T12:49:00.031+01:00

On Sun, May 30, 2010 at 14:03:20
Will asked this question:

Hello, I need a bit of guidance in regards to Freud. Could you please tell me what is meant by 'anatomy is destiny' and do you think he proves that anatomy is in fact destiny?

I think it might just be to do with the developmental stages that Freud theorised about and how these affect us when we grow and so affects our behaviour and thoughts.

Searching for "Anatomy is destiny" in Google I quickly found an answer to Will's question in the Online Glossary of Psychological Terms from Athabasca University:

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) claimed that anatomy is destiny, that is, one's gender determines one's main personality traits. Karen Horney (1885-1952), while considering herself a disciple of Freud, disagreed. Beginning in 1923, she began publishing papers arguing for culture over biology as the primary determinant of personality. Thus, if a woman feels inferior to a man, it is not due to some universal process such as penis envy. Rather, she wrote, '[t]he wish to be a man... may be the expression of a wish for all those qualities or privileges which in our culture are regarded as masculine, such as strength, courage, independence, success, sexual freedom, right to choose a partner' (New ways in psychoanalysis New York: Norton 1939, p. 108). For Horney, the reason psychoanalysis appears to understand men better than women is that the field, from the beginning, has been dominated almost exclusively by male thinking and thus has evolved into a masculine enterprise.

Disentangling the strands of nature and nurture with respect to human sexuality is an incredibly difficult undertaking. But Freud wasn't simply guessing in the dark or expressing common prejudices of his day (or indeed ours). He made his judgement on the basis of many hundreds of hours of analytic practice.

— But then, so did Horney.

I don't have an axe to grind in defending Freud. It seems to me perfectly possible that like many researchers Freud discovered what he was looking for. As this is a question for Ask a Philosopher and not 'Ask a Psychoanalyst' or 'Ask a Social Psychologist' I don't want to get bogged down in that debate.

However, I do have experience of my own to call upon. I am male, and a philosopher, and many hours of following, or attempting to follow the Socratic maxim 'know thyself' has naturally led me to reflect on the role of my sexuality in relation to my chosen calling.

A couple of months ago, in my post on Knowing the limits of knowledge I wrote:

One might observe that the attitude which Santayana describes of opening ourselves up to experience the wonder itself shows something of the aspect of 'the feminine'. By contrast, the thought of adventurously penetrating to the heart of reality has a resolutely masculine appeal.

I go on to cite one of my favourite quotes from Hegel, from the Preface to his Lectures on the History of Philosophy (1825-6) where he says that 'The Being of the universe... has no power which can offer resistance to the search for knowledge; it has to lay itself open before the seeker — to set before his eyes and give for his enjoyment, its riches and its depths.'

Even though the words make me cringe, just a bit, I recognize that, fundamentally, that is how I feel about philosophy. It's not that I've never experienced the 'opening up' feeling Santayana describes. But far more often my thoughts dwell on the challenge of honing and sharpening my intellect in order to get down into the recalcitrant roots of reality.

At this point, you might accuse me of focusing too narrowly on a single image. What about the competitive nature of philosophical debate?

I've been witness to some comic scenes in Oxford academic philosophy seminar rooms, where professors high on intellectual vanity and testosterone have tussled like angry bulls. — And they wonder why there are fewer female academic philosophers!

Glass House Philosopher Notebook II, p. 46

Yes, there is that aspect too. But I think that it is less fundamental. How else to you behave when philosophy seminars are organized as bull rings? There is another way, where debate is co-operative rather than competitive, but to make this happen you have to do some radical thinking; about ways to overcome the inherently competitive nature of a career where in order to rise to the top you have to prove yourself to be better than the next philosopher.

Oh, I just remembered something:

And have you ever thought about the strange phenomenon of books? why they are made the way they are? why scholars love to pore over them? Because what they are secretly after is a woman's...

Glass House Philosopher Notebook II, p. 134

The year was 1977, my first year as a graduate student at University College Oxford. On my wall, in my room at Merton Street, was an Athena poster of a Modigliani nude. I'd just woken up from a nap. Glancing up at the painting, I caught myself in the act of daydreaming, about a book — that wasn't a book. I've never fully been able to shake that image from my mind.

But this isn't a psychoanalyst's couch, and the evidence of dreams or daydreams is flimsy at best. What I know is how I think, how my mind typically works, whatever the topic or problem. An attitude, a sense of conviction which colours everything that I do.

Then what is there — down there?

I remember seeing a quote from a review of Iris Murdoch's The Philosopher's Pupil (1998) where the main protagonist, a philosopher called Rozanov says something to the effect that, 'When you dig down — and that's not very far down — all you find is jumble and rubble.' That depressed, and depressing thought was quite sufficient to put me off reading the novel.

I don't mind that there is jumble and rubble in me, I accept Murdoch's view that when we 'tell our story' we always idealize, we avoid looking at the bits of the jigsaw that don't fit together. That's about the self, the jumble and rubble in us. But what I can never accept is that that's how it is, at the very roots of reality.

In the past, I've referred to this piously as 'the faith of the philosopher', but that makes it sound as if I'm searching for God. And what if I met up with my quarry? — 'If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him!' (Sheldon B. Kopp, Bantham 1976: a brilliant take on the aims and practice of psychotherapy.)

It's not God, not destiny or faith, but just resolute determination not to be illuded, to ask questions where no-one else sees a question, to 'break on through'.

The point is that I can. I am free, and that is what freedom ultimately means to me. I don't know what's 'down there'. If I did, there wouldn't be a question. I may never know. But whatever the chances, even if there are none, I will continue digging. It's a matter of pride; arguably, male pride.

Atheism as best explanation

2010-05-24T11:37:00.034+01:00

On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 03:05:15
Kalyan asked this question:

I claim and proclaim to be an atheist as well as a skeptic rationalist. But then, my question, is it a contradiction in the sense that as a skeptic and a rationalist, I don't have enough evidence to prove my arguments as an atheist?

The short answer to Kalyan is that you can be an atheist while holding a reasoned skeptical stance ('reasoned' because your skepticism isn't either pathological or mere blind obstinacy) without believing yourself to be in a position to offer a proof that God does not exist. It suffices that you can offer arguments in favour of the view that atheism is the 'best explanation'.

'Best explanation for what?' is the question. The existence of a world (rather than no world) is one possible explanans, or thing to be explained. Another possible explanans is the existence of a Moral Law (if you believe in such a thing). But there are many more, maybe as many as there are views on the nature of the godhead.

I have never undergone the experience of a religious revelation. But supposing I did, would I be in a position to consider theism and atheism as alternative explanations and, moreover, choose atheism on the grounds that it provided a better explanation for my experience than atheism? Well, yes, that is what one has to say as an atheist. But I admit it sounds rather odd to say it. I can see a case of arguing that an experience wouldn't be the experience of religious revelation if you regarded it as possibly illusory. But then again, that problem doesn't arise if the explanans is another person's (alleged) religious revelation.

The idea that a scientific theory is an 'inference to the best explanation' goes back to the American philosopher of science C.S. Peirce who distinguished what he termed abduction from the process of Baconian induction. The idea was more recently revived by British philosopher of science Peter Lipton, and has become part of the vocabulary of contemporary analytic philosophy.

My University of London external students taking the BA Philosophy of Science module have been sending me essays on this topic, along the general theme, 'Is inference to the best explanation a distinctive kind of explanation?' I find Lipton's idea somewhat hazy, and yet there seems undoubtedly to be a core notion, which the God question illustrates nicely. You wouldn't seriously claim to have inductive evidence for atheism. Yet it seems to make perfect sense to say that atheism is a better explanation for any alleged evidence that a theist might put forward than theism.

According to Occam's Razor, other things being equal the better explanation is the one that posits fewer hypothetical entities. God is an unnecessary posit. Any explanation that does any work, works just as well without God directing things behind the scenes. That would be the moderate atheist view.

Enter Dawkins. In 1976, in my first year taking the Oxford B.Phil, there was a rumour going round that the redoubtable Gareth Evans was offering his undergraduate tutees and graduate students a free hardback copy of The Selfish Gene (which had been published that year) provided they promised to read it. With such a great testimonial, I could never bring myself to indulge in the fashionable Dawkins-bashing, despite Dawkins' somewhat embarrassing reductive views of the nature of philosophical inquiry, as a mere illustration of the theory of 'memes'.

Apropos of the meme theory, the Presocratic philosopher Xenophanes is the first recorded philosopher to employ a genetic argument against a religious claim:

Ethiopians say that their gods are snub-nosed and black, the Thracians that theirs have light blue eyes and red hair.

Kirk, Raven and Schofield The Presocratic Philosophers §168, p. 169

As Xenophanes must surely have realized, this isn't an argument that God cannot be black and have a snub nose. What the observed 'coincidence' shows, in our terms, is that the Ethiopians' reasoning to the best explanation is likely to have been somewhat biased. Having said that, if you believe that man is 'made in God's image' and your only experience of human beings is of people who are black and have snub noses, then it is surely reasonable to infer that God is black and has a snub nose.

However, by the same token, someone who had travelled a bit and discovered that different races have different physiognomies, would realize that this inference was not reasonable, and that any claim of 'resemblance' between God, or the gods, and man must allow for racial variation.

What this shows, if anything, is that you can undermine a purported inference to the best explanation by either pointing out grounds for possible suspicion of bias, and/or showing that the explanation relies on an impoverished evidential base. At any given time, however, the explanation remains in place until either a better explanation comes along, or the grounds for putting forward that explanation are undermined.

I would therefore be quite happy to accept that the belief that atheism is the best explanation for the existence of the world, or the phenomenon of religion — or anything you like — is a 'meme', in Dawkins' sense, whose evolutionary history goes back to the great historic clashes between established religion and the emerging sciences. That doesn't decide the question whether atheism is or isn't in fact 'the best explanation'.

But doesn't our very sense of what makes one explanation 'better' than another depend on prior conditioning, on the memes that have been transmitted to us? Is there a fact of the matter here? Couldn't we be completely wrong about what is or is not a good explanation?

For Dawkins, the spectacular success of science is a major consideration. The kinds of criticism that any scientific claim is subjected to by other scientists do not vindicate themselves (because the same argument can be run with 'the kinds of criticism that any theological claim is subjected to by other theologians'). However, the advantage science has over theology, is in its results. Religious belief has 'results' too, but the results arise from the belief — its psychological effect on the believer — rather than the truth of the belief: a vital distinction.

As I've said, it all depends on the explanans. Here, there is a nice finesse in that the atheist isn't the one who has to state what the explanation is intended to explain. Atheism is not a claim, but rather the denial of a claim. The onus is clearly on the one who makes the claim — the one who asserts that God exists — either to offer a proof, or, failing that, to justify the view that God's existence is a better explanation for XYZ, whatever 'XYZ' may be, than any alternative.

Thought and language

2010-05-14T12:21:00.024+01:00

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 20:22:50
Benjamin asked this question:

True or False: The fact that we often have difficulty putting our thoughts into words disconfirms the view that we think in the language in which we speak.

False. The question isn't whether, in fact, we think in the language in which we speak (e.g. English) or whether we think in some other language (e.g. Jerry Fodor's 'language of thought'). That's a big debate, which we don't have to go into.

What Benjamin's question specifically asks is whether the fact that we often have difficulty putting our thoughts into words is compelling evidence against the view that we think in the language in which we speak, or, what amounts to the same thing, whether it is evidence for the view that we think in some other 'language'.

It is not. The standard reply is that, 'If you can't find the words, you don't have a clear thought.' There's something you think you are thinking about, a thought you are trying to think, but you haven't succeeded in actually thinking that thought. When you do finally find the words, then the thought comes into being and not before. All the feelings that you have prior to that point, the feeling of unease, of something tugging at your mind, or whatever it is, are just that and nothing more.

But how do I know that? I don't need to know. So far as one is able to tell purely from introspection, it might be true that a thought comes into being with the words that express it. It might also be true that the thought is prior to the words, but that's irrelevant. All one needs to defeat the claim in question is that it doesn't follow from the fact that we sometimes strain to express a thought that the thought is prior to the words.

It looks like I don't have much to write today. But actually, there's something tugging hard at my mind that tells me that this is all too superficial. I don't like it.

I read Fodor's book Language of Thought (1975) at the beginning of my first year as a graduate student at Oxford. His thesis seemed rather fanciful to me, not least because of what he said about Wittgenstein's argument against a private language. I'd just picked the book up at Blackwell's Bookshop because it looked interesting. It never occurred to me that it would generate the vast body of literature that it has. — That fact doesn't make me feel the least bit sorry about my initial judgement.

However, I want to come at this from a different angle. I've lost my taste for the technical complexities of this debate, which takes in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, cognitive science and AI.

At Oxford, there were a couple of other books which I read, by a philosopher who is hardly discussed today, Justus Buchler. (There's no Wikipedia entry, a telling sign.) The titles are The Nature of Judgement (1955) and Metaphysics of Natural Complexes (1966). I remember discussing what I'd read with my supervisor John McDowell who'd never heard of Buchler. But then no-one else I mentioned him to had either.

On Buchler's theory of judgement, a pole vaulter's leap, a painting, a skyscraper, or a sentence in English can all be called, without equivocation or metaphor, 'judgements'. When a pole vaulter vaults, or when an artist paints a painting, or when an architect designs a building, each is engaged in a thoughtful activity which exists side by side with, and in a sense independently of, the thoughtful activity of forming sentences in speech. But also more than just an 'activity'. The final result is an entity that exists in its own right, as a product of what went before, in the same sense that a verbal judgement is a final product of the activity or process of thinking.

Let's just try to imagine what it's like to be that pole vaulter. You've just failed the last jump, You were nearly over, but your left heel just caught the bar. What's going on in your mind? Lots of words, to be sure, perhaps a few swear words. But there's something else there too. As you feel the weight of the pole balancing in your palm, as you get ready to sprint, eyes fixed on the bar, the words that come into your head aren't the essential thing.

The run, the leap, the twist, every part of the choreographed movement is an action, which forms part of an articulated sequence of actions, just as words form parts of a sentence. Just as Frege held that the meaning of a word consists in its contribution to the meaning of a sentence or statement, whose aim is to state something true, so the 'meaning' of that particular vault depends upon its contribution to the attempt to clear the bar. The whole action, the 'judgement' succeeds or fails, just as a statement succeeds or fails in stating the truth.

Contemporary philosophers of mind and action probably wouldn't find too much here to argue with. However, what is important for me is the emphasis. Too much emphasis is placed by philosophers on the language question. What Buchler's account suggests is that there is a far greater richness to our mental life than the verbal thoughts we think. This extra component is not just 'experience' or 'feeling' but rather rational activity, a form of reasoning which exists apart from words, and which cannot be reduced to language.

To be sure, this 'rational activity' is not just some process in the head. If anything, it is far more obvious that doing a pole vault in your head isn't doing a pole vault even though the ability to imaginatively represent, accurately, the intended action or sequence of actions is part of what constitutes the pole vaulter's mastery of this particular field sport.

Could a creature who did not have verbal language 'reason' in this way? Here we are pulled different ways. It is human reason and judgement, expressed in words, that is involved in evaluating a piece of architecture or a work of art. In a similar way, in a diving contest the judges are able to defend, in words, the marks that they award. In a jump or a vault, on the other hand, success or failure is a simple verifiable fact. The bar is cleared or it is not cleared.

What that overlooks, however, is the fact that the ability to reason and form judgements in words is essential in an athlete's training. There is a science of sport. The quest for greater performance is, at least in part, a scientific endeavour.

So what does all this show about thought and language? One's initial reaction might be that Buchler has presented a clear case that there are forms of thinking or judging which do not involve words. There are other forms of ratiocination besides linguistic ratiocination. Perhaps no-one will ever write the definitive 'logic' of pole vaulting, but that merely reflects the unique capacity of language to make a particular and very important species of judgement — linguistic judgement — possible.

On second thoughts, surely what this shows is that we need to rephrase the question. Language is essential to linguistic or 'logical' thought. Other forms of thought require their own media — whether it be the pole vaulter's body and pole, or the painter's eyes, hand and paint brush — which are just as much part of our shared, common reality as words are.

On the obligation to testify

2010-05-07T11:12:00.034+01:00

On Tues, May 4, 2010 at 17:18:48
Penny asked this question:

This is a question about justice, the law and the duty of bystanders who witness a crime.

A philosopher friend criticised my son as a 'snitch' for going to court to testify in a case as a witness (whereas I thought he was being public spirited, and argued that justice through the courts can only be achieved when people are prepared to testify even in the face of intimidation).

My son and three teenage friends were the only other customers in a family-run Pakistani restaurant which a group of aggressive white men trashed when they were unhappy with the service. They also attacked and injured one of the waiters, a clever sixth former in the same school my son and his friends attended, leaving him with some brain damage.

After much discussion of this and other hypothetical examples, my philosopher friend's reasoning seemed to be that giving evidence against people who have done nothing to you is not your business. If that evidence is given to authorities with coercive authority over people, it constitutes an act of aggression against others. He argued that it goes against Kant's first formulation; and challenged me to devise an appropriate maxim that would always hold true and I couldn't. As he wrote to me about it, 'If a principle cannot be universalised without contradiction it is not true and cannot be true. It may be an emotionally attractive principle and make you feel better, but it still isn't true.'

He agreed that I could report a robbery (or other crime) in progress to the police to allow them to do their duty and then go about my business, or I could intervene directly in the situation myself. But he claimed that I could not justify giving evidence in court after the fact.

I am interested in philosophy but am very poor at following through to logical conclusions. I asked if his was a very hardline Kantian position, as I couldn't imagine any of the usual secular humanist Kantian philosophers whose articles I read in the Guardian or wherever taking the same line, but he claimed that was the logical application of the CI in this case and there was no getting round it.

Is he right?

No, your friend is not right. The claim is that witnesses to a crime not only do not have the moral obligation to testify in court, but indeed are morally obliged not to testify. As justification for this claim your friend offers the first formulation of Kant's Categorical Imperative:

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (Quoted from the Wikipedia article on Kant's Categorical Imperative)

So we have to propositions to consider: First, whether witnesses to a crime are under a moral obligation not to offer themselves up voluntarily in order to testify in court; Second, whether this claim follows from Kant's Categorical Imperative, or, more specifically, from the first formulation of the Categorical Imperative.

Let's look at the first claim. One of the basic regulative principles which govern the way arguments in moral philosophy are conducted concerns the way we test proposed moral theories or philosophical claims about ethics against our intuitions, i.e. our ethical beliefs prior to conducting a philosophical examination. The American philosopher John Rawls, author of A Theory of Justice (1971) has coined a nice term for this, which has become part of the contemporary philosophical vocabulary: he calls it reflective equilibrium.

When you make a claim, on the basis of a theory, which goes against unreflective moral intuitions then there are potentially two possible outcomes. Either one rejects the intuitions, or one rejects the theory. No moral theory is sacrosanct in this regard.

If witnesses to a crime never have the moral obligation or even the right to testify in court that would strike a blow at the very basis of our system of justice. The outcome would be intolerable in a civilized society. You know this. That is why the response from your 'philosopher' friend has left you so perplexed.

Now, it could well be that your friend has seized on this example as an argument against Kant's Categorical Imperative. This is familiar territory for moral philosophers. Even if one does not accept Kant's Categorical Imperative, one would be disinclined to accept the conclusion that Kant was just stupid, and didn't see an obvious negative consequence of his view. (Here, I am invoking another regulative principle, the Principle of Charity.) In other words, even philosophers who are not Kantians, have an interest in showing how Kant might have dealt with this challenge to his theory.

Suppose you were to say, 'Any time someone finds themself in the circumstances I have described [you then go on to describe the circumstances in detail] is under a moral obligation to testify.' This looks like a cheat, and it is. Kant would reply that more is required to make a maxim truly 'universal' than simply expressing it in the logical form of a universal statement.

Yet surely it is not the case that at all times and at all places, a witness to a 'crime' is morally obliged to testify in court. If as a student during the Third Reich I had the misfortune to hear my professor uttering words of criticism of Adolf Hitler, I am not morally obliged (even though I may be obliged by Nazi law) to attend as a witness for the prosecution. (There is, of course, a potential moral dilemma here for anyone who holds that there is a moral obligation to always obey the law, whether you agree with it or not: The issues are explored in the ISFP Fellowship dissertation by George Brooks on Positive Law Theory and its application to the case of Nazi Germany.)

The challenge for Kantians would be to find an acceptable path between the overly lax and overly rigid formulations of what the maxim of your action would be in this case. The result which we want is one where there is a moral obligation to testify in cases like that of the restaurant thugs, but no moral obligation to testify, or indeed a moral obligation not to testify, in cases like that of the outspoken professor.

One possibility would be to incorporate the caveat that testifying 'serves the interests of justice'. Once again, however, that makes things too easy. The Categorical Imperative was supposed to be the infallible touchstone of moral action, but now we would be appealing to a prior understanding of what is 'justice' or what actions are 'just' or 'unjust'. Nor, indeed, would we want it to be the case that whenever witnesses are asked to testify, they first have to decide for themselves what does or does not serve the interests of justice. That is why we have judges.

In some ways, the challenge to the Categorical Imperative looks similar to the case of lying. Kant notoriously argued that it was never right to tell a lie, even in the case where a crazed axeman is pursuing his intended victim and demands to know, 'Which way did he go?' (In his essay, 'On the Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns', Kant argues, unconvincingly, that e.g. if you say, 'He went left' thinking that he went right, and in fact unknown to you the victim did go left, then you would bear full moral responsibility for the outcome.)

Despite the well-known objections, I do think that Kant is onto something important in the case of lying (see Unit 5 of the Pathways Ethical Dilemmas program). We have to recognize — as Kant apparently did not — that even for the impeccably 'good will' some times there can be irresolvable ethical dilemmas. Whatever you do will be 'wrong', so you have choose the lesser of two evils.

In the case of the obligation to testify, more is needed than simply the rule that one must always tell the truth. I can simply refuse to enter into the court room. So the challenge for the Kantian in the case of the obligation to testify is, if anything, harder than the challenge in the case of apparent counterexamples to the moral principle that one should never tell a lie.

If the challenge can't be met, then that is bad news for the claim of the Categorical Imperative to provide an infallible touchstone for ethics, and your moral intuitions about your son testifying in court survive. On the other hand, if the challenge can be met, then once again your moral intuitions survive. Either way you are right and your 'philosopher friend' is wrong.

Can the challenge to Kant's Categorical Imperative be met? My hunch is that Kant's strategy would be to invoke the Third formulation of the Categorical Imperative:

Therefore, every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends.

Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (ibid.)

A 'kingdom of ends' in Kant's conception is not a mere collection of isolated individuals, each of whom takes care not to encroach on the moral rights of others. On the contrary, Kant's vision is overtly teleological, something that was not apparent in the first (or indeed the second) formulation. In a kingdom of ends each of us has a responsibility for actively supporting the state and the rule of law.

That doesn't mean I have to set myself up as judge and jury. It does mean that one has to acknowledge one's duties as a citizen. In contemporary terms, that includes voting, jury service, and, where necessary, attending as a witness in court.

My intuition is that there is indeed a fine line between responsible citizenship and being a busybody or a 'snitch'. In a relatively trivial matter like littering or indecent behaviour I would rather not be called upon to play my part in oiling the wheels of justice. In such cases, the Categorical Imperative does look like a rather blunt instrument, but I don't know of any moral theory which would fare better. — So much the worse, some would say, for 'moral theory'.

Why people die

2010-04-26T11:25:00.032+01:00

On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 17:56:03
Courtney asked this question:

Why do people die?

I was at a funeral last week, the mother of a good friend and former student, who died in her bed at the age of 51. The death was totally unexpected, and all the more shocking for that. Death seems senseless to those bereaved, but especially in circumstances like this.

Yet any one of us could die, in the very next second. The human body is so fragile.

I have already looked at the fear of death. I first wrote about this in my article Is it Rational to Fear Death? which was prompted by the death of my own mother.

However, there is another side to this question which I haven't looked at. Putting thoughts of consolation aside — if such a thing is possible — why do we die? Obviously, there's a sense in which we all know the answer to this question; I've just stated it: 'the human body is fragile.' Things that are born, also die. It's a fact of biology. Yet, somehow, that answer doesn't seem enough.

Courtney's question isn't about factual explanation. We all know the facts. It is a request for a metaphysical explanation. In that post, I considered the question, 'Why do things break?' as an example of a request for a metaphysical explanation. You might indeed be tempted to see the death of a human being as merely a special case of this. If all material things are, logically, capable of being broken then so is a living body.

But I think this is not quite right. There's more to it. And this, perhaps, be a way of indirectly gaining some hope or consolation in the face of death even though this is strictly not my present objective.

As the first piece of evidence, I would cite the thought of a Greek philosopher who lived before Socrates — one of the Presocratics of the Eleatic school named Melissus. Melissus is in some ways considered the 'poor man's Parmenides' because he dared to question the central doctrine of his teacher that the One is temporally and spatially finite. Actually, I think Melissus' arguments are better than he has been given credit for (e.g. by Aristotle).

My interest is in one particular argument which goes like this: Assume that the One is temporally infinite. It has always existed and will always exist. (I'm not concerned here with why Melissus rejected Parmenides' doctrine that the One neither 'was' nor 'will be' but only timelessly 'is'.) If we assume temporal infinitude then the One cannot, Melissus argues, be spatially finite. Why not? Here are Melissus' words:

But since it neither began nor ended, it always was and always will be and it has no beginning nor end; for what is not entire cannot be always.

Kirk, Raven and Schofield The Presocratic Philosophers 2nd edn, CUP 1982. §526, p. 394

McKirahan Philosophy Before Socrates Hackett 1994 §15.2, p. 394

Assume that the One is finite. It follows that it is logically possible that the One can grow. But anything logically capable of growth is also capable of shrinkage. But if we allow the possibility that the One can shrink then there is no logical barrier, in principle, to its shrinking to nothing. Just keep taking bits away until there's nothing left. 'What is not entire cannot be always.'

The conclusion of this argument — if it's valid, which I think it is — is stronger than the explanation I gave for why things break. Material things, I argued in my post on metaphysical explanations, are structures which occupy space, and any structure can in principle be broken apart so that it no longer performs its characteristic function. (Note that what this argument doesn't show is that things can be permanently broken. If you break a thing into bits then there is no logical reason why you can't put the bits back together so that it works again. Maybe the task would exceed human technology, but that's just a contingent limitation.)

What the Melissus argument establishes is that anything which is finite in extent cannot be immortal by nature. This isn't about 'matter' or 'structure' but rather finitude as such. So we can easily extend the argument to cover a universe in which there is soul substance or mental substance in addition to material substance. Even if mental substance cannot be 'broken' like material substances, that is no guarantee of its survival.

When Descartes argued for mind-body dualism in his Meditations he did not thereby prove the immortality of the soul, even though many have thought he did. The soul, being non-material, is immune from physical destruction. However, by the very fact that the soul is finite, not infinite, there is no logical barrier to its being snuffed out, even if it survives the death of the physical body. Descartes in fact believed that all 'finite substances', whether material or mental only continue in existence because of the continual creative effort of an infinite God. If He so wanted, God could allow any soul to go out of existence. Everlasting life may be a promise, but it is not a logical certainty.

Where does that leave us? Believe what you like about what happens when the body dies. According to the Melissus argument nothing which is 'finite in extent' — which can be diminished by having things taken away, whether material or mental — is immune from destruction.

However, not being immune from destruction doesn't mean that an entity is necessarily bound to be destroyed. And therein lies the catch.

We naturally think of the destruction of a human being, whether physical or mental, as death. However, in order to be death, real death, the destruction must be permanent. There can be no possibility of putting the person in question 'back together again' like Humpty Dumpty. But how can we ever know that?

In the case of material things, we can know. We know (at least, according to the best cosmological theory) that the universe has a finite life-span. Everything will end in a Big Crunch. Even if this is followed by a Big Bang and a universe identical to the one which existed before, anything that existed in the former universe is not 'brought back into existence' but merely copied. Next time around, St Paul's Cathedral will not be this St Paul's Cathedral but merely an exactly similar St Paul's Cathedral. And for the same reasons, if you and I are brought back, it will be a perfectly similar people not the same me or you.

However, if you are a mind-body dualist, there's a get-out clause. We are talking about the logical possibility of survival. And we all know, or think we know, what that means. You wake up and realize, 'I'm still alive!' Couldn't you do that, after the destruction of the universe? Why not?

The reader who has followed the argument thus far will realize that the conclusion we are shaping up to is this:

According to the argument of Melissus, nothing finite, whether physical or mental, can be necessarily immortal. However, at least for things which have mental properties, one cannot logically rule out the possibility of survival in any given set of contingent circumstances (e.g. the death of the body). To be finite, to be capable of death, implies by contrast the thought of the infinite. If you are dead you are dead forever, for all infinite time. And who can be sure of that?

As I implied above, this hope (or fear, if you are tempted by Pascal's Wager) is only really available if you take a dualist line. Moreover, not just any version of dualism will do. Anyone with Humean doubts about personal identity will resist the temptation to rely on our intuitions about what it would take for some entity to be 'I' at any time in the future. Or as I once stated (cf. the fear of death) 'My subjective world can never die, can never cease to continue, for with every new moment it is as if it had never existed, and will continue no longer than that very moment.' — In that case, there's nothing to be concerned about, is there?

Knowing the limits of knowledge

2010-04-16T13:37:00.043+01:00

On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 23:40:22
Tanzeel asked this question:

Hi,

As it is admitted that there is a limit to human knowledge or understanding, I just want to know what is meant by limit? How and when can we say that 'Now that is the limit'? How can anyone have the knowledge of the limitation of the knowledge?

This is a great question. We take it more or less for granted that human knowledge has limits — limits which we don't know (because we haven't reached them yet) but also limits which we do know about. Bertrand Russell has the dubious honour of writing a book which was once referenced in one of the episodes of the legendary BBC comedy written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, Hancock's Half Hour:

Oh I don't KNOW what he's talking about. The limit and scope of human knowledge. Well we've soon found out MY limit haven't we — three sentences!

'The Bedsitter'

The title of Russell's book (which Tony Hancock is struggling to read in bed) is Human Knowledge: It's Scope and Limits (1948). I've had a copy on my bookshelf for years and never got so far as reading one sentence. I'm sure it's a very worthy book, and far from being one of Russell's potboilers. But my main limit is patience. There are lots of things I ought to know but don't, just as there are lots of books I ought to have read but haven't, because it would cost just too much time and effort.

Twenty years ago, I wouldn't have owned up to that, but age has brought a modest increase in self-knowledge. As Dirty Harry once said, 'A man's got to know his limitations.'

But we're not talking about that kind of 'limit'. Limits to human knowledge would be limits which we could not overcome even with our very best efforts.

In many cases, or so we naturally assume, we will never know what these limits are because we will never even get close to them. In Donald Rumsfeld's immortal words, they are 'unknown unknowns'. But Tanzeel isn't concerned with this kind of limit. She's concerned with the limits which we allegedly know about. How can you ever know, for sure, what the limits to human knowledge are?

There is a puzzle which has to do with the quantitative aspect of knowledge, the sheer immensity of things to be known. It is a problem which infects Finitism in mathematics (sometimes known as 'strict finitism') which extends the rejection of the classical notion of the infinite by mathematical Intuitionism to the Aristotelian-Kantian notion of the 'potential' infinite. According to finitists, anything to do with the 'infinite' in any sense of the word is beyond human knowledge and understanding, period. You might as well just be babbling.

The difficulty with this position is that even if you get rid of the infinite, you still have to deal with immensely large finite numbers, like a quadrillion to the power of quadrillion. A proof which required that number of steps would be beyond the capacity of any embodied being, now or a any time in the future. There are not enough particles in the universe.

The problem I'm thinking of has to do with the ancient Paradox of the Heap. One grain of sand is not a heap. If n grains of sand cannot make a heap, then n+1 grains of sand cannot make a heap either. But then it follows by a simple application of mathematical induction that no amount of sand can make a heap. Let's take a similar case in finitism. A proof which requires a thousand lines is capable of being constructed. (If you have the patience to do it, of course.) If a proof consisting of n lines is capable of being constructed, then a proof which is just one line longer is capable of being constructed. Therefore (as before) a proof of any finite length (including a quadrillion to the power of quadrillion lines) is capable of being constructed.

Or in more down-to-earth terms: we know how to measure the weight of one grain of sand (it's around a half to one milligram). This is easily done with any precision laboratory balance. If you can know the individual weights of n grains of sand, then you can know the individual weights of n+1 grains of sand. You just measure the weight of one more grain. Therefore you can, in principle, know the weight of each grain of sand on every beach in the world. But we know we can never know this.

So there is a real difficulty with the idea of 'knowing the limit' when it comes to merely quantitative restrictions on knowledge. There is no way, in principle, that you can draw the line between what is knowable and what is not knowable.

What about qualitative restrictions on the kinds of knowledge it is possible to have?

There are various kinds of case where we come up against the limits of observation and prediction. There are very good reasons why you cannot predict the behaviour of a human being with complete confidence. But on the other hand we can come close in many cases, and especially when we are dealing with human behaviour from a statistical point of view (e.g. the number of men each year who marry at the age of 25). In physics, by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle you can never know the precise mass and velocity of a particle, because all measurement involves some form of physical interaction, and physical interaction alters the state of the thing you were attempting to observe. But, once again, we can gain a great deal of information about physical systems on the sub-microscopic level.

But I don't think that this is the kind of case Tanzeel is thinking about either. Like the quantitative limits to knowledge, these kinds of example are just too mundane.

In my last post, I talked a bit about Kant's theory of phenomena and noumena, and the idea that the world of physical things in space which we interact with and which science investigates is merely an 'appearance' of some unknowable ultimate reality. I've already given my reasons why I don't accept this view. You can only go by the best argument, in philosophy as elsewhere, and according to the argument which persuades me, Kant is wrong. Maybe The Matrix does 'have us'. But in that case that is just more physical reality, not something supra-physical, beyond space and time.

However, one might think of the category of the Unknowable in a less metaphysically loaded, but no less compelling way.

In his Herbert Spencer lecture 'The Unknowable' George Santayana rescues a doctrine that Spencer was heavily criticized for, the view that the 'substance' of the world is 'unknowable', and gives it a poetic twist:

I have sometimes wondered at the value ladies set upon jewels: as centres of light, jewels seem rather trivial and monotonous. And yet there is an unmistakable spell about these pebbles; they can be taken up and turned over; they can be kept; they are faithful possessions; the sparkle of them, shifting from moment to moment, is constant from age to age. They are substances. The same aspects of light and colour, if they were homeless in space, or could be spied only once and irrecoverably, like fireworks, would have a less comfortable charm. In jewels there is the security, the mystery, the inexhaustible fixity proper to substance. After all, perhaps I can understand the fascination they exercise over the ladies; it is the same that the eternal feminine exercises over us. Our contact with them is unmistakable, our contemplation of them gladly renewed, and pleasantly prolonged; yet in one sense they are unknowable; we cannot fathom the secret of their constancy, of their hardness, of that perpetual but uncertain brilliancy by which they dazzle us and hide themselves. These qualities of the jewel and of the eternal feminine are also the qualities of substance and of the world. The existence of this world — unless we lapse for a moment into an untenable scepticism — is certain, or at least it is unquestioningly to be assumed. Experience may explore it adventurously, and science may describe it with precision; but after you have wandered up and down in it for many years, and have gathered all you could of its ways by report, this same world, because it exists substantially and is not invented, remains a foreign thing and a marvel to the spirit: unknowable as a drop of water is unknowable, or unknowable like a person loved.

George Santayana 'The Unknowable' Herbert Spencer Lecture 1923

If you look at the question this way, then of course there is a limit to human knowledge, which exists by virtue of the fact of the sheer inexhaustibility of the world. We know that we will never cease to find things that we previously didn't know about — new aspects to marvel at — so long as we continue our quest for knowledge. But there will always be far, far more than we can ever know.

When I first read this, in an old volume which belonged to my parents, Reading I have Liked edited by Clifton Fadiman, I was enchanted. These days one would hesitate to quote Santayana's references to 'the ladies' and the fascination which they exercise 'over us' (weren't there any 'ladies' in the audience?). But I would just say, Get over it, otherwise there's too much great literature that you would have to consign to the flames.

One might observe that the attitude which Santayana describes of opening ourselves up to experience the wonder itself shows something of the aspect of 'the feminine'. By contrast, the thought of adventurously penetrating to the heart of reality has a resolutely masculine appeal. This quote from Hegel, from the Preface to his Lectures on the History of Philosophy which I have used for unit 1 of the Metaphysics program says it all:

But in the first place, I can ask nothing of you but to bring with you, above all, a trust in science and a trust in yourselves. The love of truth, faith in the power of mind, is the first condition in Philosophy. Man, because he is Mind, should and must deem himself worthy of the highest; he cannot think too highly of the greatness and the power of his mind, and, with this belief, nothing will be so difficult and hard that it will not reveal itself to him. The Being of the universe, at first hidden and concealed, has no power which can offer resistance to the search for knowledge; it has to lay itself open before the seeker — to set before his eyes and give for his enjoyment, its riches and its depths.

G.W.F. Hegel Lectures on the History of Philosophy 1825-6, Preface

On the Pathways Follydiddledah! web site I have illustrated this with a photo of a NASA Saturn Rocket blasting off from Cape Kennedy. (I could have also used a photo of the Large Hadron Collider.) I hope that human beings will never lose the appetite 'to boldly go'. However, it is good to temper boldness with a modicum of reverence for the inexhaustibility of a universe which we found and did not make.

Realism, idealism, solipsism

2010-04-09T11:02:00.034+01:00

On Tues, Mar 16, 2010 at 13:58:53
Ruy asked this question:

Is it possible to embrace idealism and not to fall into solipsism?

On Tues, Mar 16, 2010 at 14:25:51
Muganga asked this question:

I would like to know the difference between the idealistic philosophy and the realistic philosophy.

I've postponed this question long enough. I first tried an answer a couple of weeks ago, but abandoned it. You could say that solipsism is my Achilles' heel. But Ruy is one of my University of London students so I have to give it a go.

The starting point is a talk I gave to graduate students at The University of Hull in 1997 entitled The Partial Vindication of Solipsism. I had to apologize to my audience because the talk was only half-written. At the crucial point, I just ran out of things to say, so I had to extemporize. (We had a lively discussion — I wish someone had taped it.)

Let's first get clear about some definitions. I'm not interested here in the realism/ anti-realism debate about truth and meaning, associated with philosophers like Michael Dummett and Crispin Wright. I've written about this — you'll find it in the Pathways Philosophy of Language and Metaphysics programs, but I want to focus here on 'traditional' idealisms, like Berkeley's Immaterialism, Kant's Transcendental Idealism (with phenomena-noumena distinction) and, possibly, Bradley's (or Hegel's) Objective Idealism. These are all robustly non-solipsist theories, so in a way that answers Ruy's question.

But, of course, it doesn't because the next question is, can Berkeleian Immaterialism or Kantian Transcendental Idealism or Bradleian Objective Idealism (or etc. etc.) be defended? If you do some research on the internet you'll see that a 'case can be made'. Two notable books which I may have mentioned before are John Foster The Case for Idealism (1982) and T.L.S. Sprigge The Vindication of Absolute Idealism (1984).

You don't need to be an idealist in order to see the attractions of a 'partial solipsism'. In fact, as I argue in my book Naive Metaphysics it doesn't even help to be an idealist so far as contemplating the attractions of solipsism is concerned.

Here, I want to give my 'take' on why idealism is challenge to be reckoned with. I think that idealism can be refuted. But there wouldn't be much interest in its refutation if idealism wasn't worth taking seriously.

Science has moved on, since Berkeley attacked the idea of 'matter'. The distance between a Newtonian corpuscularianism (essentially, a modified Democritean atomism) and (e.g.) string theory is stupendous. Physicist David Bohm's notion of an 'implicate order' could even be described as a 'new idealism'. But I'm going to take a broad sweep and include any view that sees physics as giving the ultimate account of the nature of the universe as inconsistent with philosophical idealism. The universe might be much stranger than we supposed, but physics gives the final account. After that, there's nothing more, you've included everything that exists.

According to the idealist — or at least my kind of 'idealist' — physics can never give the ultimate or final account. Physical theories aim to tell us how the world works, at the most fundamental level. But there is something else, which physics doesn't and cannot explain.

It's easier to grasp this if you are a theist (which I am not). What there is, which physics doesn't account for, is, on Berkeley's version of theism, the super-mind within which all physical existence is enclosed. When you look out onto the world, you are merely looking at the inside of God's mind. All the physicist does is look deeper into it. The nature of the deity is a subject for theology, or, possibly, metaphysics, but not physics.

(You can of course, be a theist without embracing idealism. God did his God bit by 'making' things out of 'matter', the way a potter makes pots out of clay. Alan Watts has a great phrase for this theory in The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966): he calls it 'The Crackpot Universe'.)

If you asked me, 'How is it that the Earth is able to hang suspended in space?' and my reply was, 'Imagine the Earth resting on a tortoise. Now, remove the tortoise', you wouldn't think much of my answer. But I do contend that what I said about the tortoise is a valid way to think of idealism. 'Imagine the universe existing inside God's mind. Now, remove God.' The point is that nothing is explained by appealing to the nature of the deity. How can we know? But, equally, one can't simply say, with Wittgenstein, 'A nothing would serve as well as a something about which nothing can be said.' Serve what purpose, exactly? If you just mean 'serve the purposes of science', then you're just begging the question.

In short, for all its ambitions towards objectivity, science is confined to looking at the universe from the inside. That's what the idealist claims. There is something beyond science, for the same reason that anything that has a 'inside' must have an 'outside'. But as to what that 'something' is we can only speculate.

A student of metaphysics might notice that what I've said isn't very far away from Kant's theory of phenomena and noumena. Or maybe Schopenhauer's World as Will and Idea.

In objective idealism, the metaphor of 'inside' and 'outside' is replaced by the notion of part to whole. According to F.H. Bradley in his treatise Appearance and Reality (1893), thinking dismembers experience by means of the apparatus of terms and relations, resulting in irreconcilable 'contradictions' which are only 'overcome' in the Absolute — although as finite beings we can have no positive knowledge of how this is possible. Even God is merely an aspect of the Absolute.

What's wrong with idealism? We can leave aside the usual objections, like P.F. Strawson's disappointingly weak reasons for rejecting the phenomena-noumena distinction in his otherwise excellent book on Kant, The Bounds of Sense (1966). Yes, talk of an 'unknowable ultimate reality' borders on the unintelligible. But that's precisely the point where we need to avoid the temptation to throw our hands up in horror (the way the old-time logical positivists used to do).

Commenting on Bradley's denial of the reality of spatial and temporal relations, Strawson's contemporary at Oxford J.L. Austin is said to have remarked, 'There's the part where you say it, and then the part where you take it back.' Space and time are 'real', for all practical human purposes, just not for metaphysics. Well, I know what Bradley meant, even if Austin (disingenuously, in my view) professes not to. If only philosophy were that easy!

I've not done much more than try to describe the idealist's vision, so it would be somewhat unfair to offer a refutation when I haven't really given an argument to refute. I have more to say about this in the Pathways Metaphysics program. However, there are two books which stand out for me as encapsulating what needs to be said if you want to resist the idealist's challenge.

The first book, or rather pair of books, is John Macmurray's The Self as Agent (1957) and Persons in Relation (1961) based on his Gifford Lectures, 'The Form of the Personal'. Macmurray identifies the key move that needs to be made as the rejection of a 'metaphysic of experience' in favour of a 'metaphysic of action'.

The second book is Richard Rorty's rightly celebrated Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) where the key assumption behind the panoply of idealist philosophies is identified as the view that human thought acts as a 'mirror' which serves to 'copy' or 'represent' an 'external reality'.

We are as agents bound up with the world too intimately to make a separation, even in thought, between experience, or thought, and its 'object'.

I suppose that this is, essentially, pragmatism. The American Pragmatist William James correctly identified this as the weak point in F.H. Bradley's idealism, the notion that human physical agency reduces to so much 'experience'.

It is the same point, again, as the famous incident when Dr Johnson, emerging into a church courtyard after hearing one of Berkeley's sermons, kicked a heavy stone and declared 'I refute it thus'. An idealist would say that Dr Johnson was being naive because 'of course' idealism can explain the experience of rapidly moving your boot, the judder of contact, etc. What Dr Johnson saw — and Berkeley missed — is that what makes reality real, and not merely 'virtual', is that actions are things we do rather than things we merely experience.

Ethics and suicide

2010-03-29T11:01:00.048+01:00

On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 20:35:51
Amalie asked this question:

This question is about why Kant's imperative about not using mankind only as a means rules out suicide.

I take a course in practical philosophy where we are now reading Grundlegung by Kant (we read it in Norwegian, so please excuse any strange translations). In class the other day we couldn't seem to agree on a question that showed up:

When talking about the second formulation of the categorical imperative, 'Act as if you use mankind (including yourself) as ends in themselves and not as means to an end' Kant presents some examples to illustrate it.

We found the first example hard to interpret.

He is testing the following maxim: is the action of committing suicide consistent with the idea of mankind as ends in themselves? Kant says it is not, because if one destroys oneself to escape a loathsome condition, one uses one person only as a means to maintain a bearable condition until life ends.

Here the problem appears: we think we do understand his imperative about not using mankind only as a means, what we don't understand is the formulation above: when Kant says 'one person' is that the person that thinks about committing suicide, or is it persons around him that have to bear with him until he kills himself? In other words, if Kant says that one uses oneself as a means, we find a logical limitation: how can one use oneself only as a means? But if he says that one uses someone else when thinking about committing suicide, we don't understand why one necessary uses someone else as a means before one die.

I do hope my question was clear, and I do hope someone finds it worth answering.

On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 14:12:39
Alvin asked this question:

I was reading about Mill from a Philosophy Now magazine and I find that he champions the desire for happiness too loosely. He said that the right moral action is the action which brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people; alright, it makes sense. But for example, suppose one day we humans became crazy and violent due to an outbreak of a wrongly experimented biological virus. But at the same time, we are sufficiently sane to be able to talk normally. Presidents all over the world declare that mandatory suicide becomes a law and everyone should do it immediately. Everyone agrees and they are happy to oblige. And so a mass suicide took place and humans are wiped out forever.

The people are feeling happy when they decide to take out their lives, but it seems obviously wrong isn't it? You might say that its coercion (i.e virus) and that coercion doesn't lead to happiness, but they are still happy with twisted ideas so does that count?

I am taking Amalie's and Alvin's questions together, not just because they both mention suicide but because they illustrate in the most dramatic way two diametrically opposed views of ethics based on the idea that universalizability is the essential defining characteristic of ethical judgement: Kant's Categorical Imperative, and preference utilitarianism.

Perhaps this is not so obvious in Alvin's case, as utilitarianism is known as a 'consequentialist' ethics by contrast with the 'deontological' ethics of Kant. However, in his book Utilitarianism Mill stated that he regarded his 'Greatest Happiness' principle as equivalent to Kant's Categorical Imperative. There is an element of truth in this rather odd claim, borne out in the moral philosophy of R.M. Hare.

Both Hare and Kant start off from the same point: how can there be such a thing as an ethical command? No factual claim is sufficient to generate an ethical command: As David Hume argued, you can't derive an 'ought' from an 'is'.

Kant's solution was to derive ethical commands from the general formula giving the form of what would be an ethical command, supposing that such a thing were possible. A hypothetical imperative, 'Do X if you want Y' can never be the form of a moral command because the motivation for doing X depends on the contingent assumption that you want Y. Kant is thus led by what seems a logically compelling inference to the Categorical Imperative, 'Act only on that maxim that you can at the same time will to be a universal law', and subsequent formulations which he claims are in some sense equivalent to the original formulation.

What emerges is the key idea that human rationality is the only thing in existence that is an end in itself, rather than a mere means to an end. The value of human beings resides wholly in their being 'lawmaking members of the Kingdom of Ends'. Everything else has merely instrumental value, as a means to that singular end.

Hare is best known as the advocate of the meta-ethical theory known as 'Prescriptivism'. Ethical statements, which on surface appearance appear descriptive in form, are in reality commands. The only constraint on what can be an ethical command is that it be universalizable.

There is a way of understanding this, according to which ethical beliefs and statements have no logical basis in reality. Anything can be an ethical belief or 'command' provided that it satisfies the formal requirements. If I believe that toothpaste tubes should always be squeezed from the bottom, then this is an ethical belief provided that I regard the statement as applying everyone in all circumstances. If you squeeze a toothpaste tube from the top, you are doing something which in my view is 'ethically wrong'.

The obvious difficulty is, on this view, everyone is is free to formulate his or her own 'ethical' rules. You always brush your teeth before breakfast, but I don't agree with that. It depends on whether or not I am in a hurry to get out. Whereas you don't agree with my ethical rule regarding squeezing toothpaste tubes, because some tubes are hard to squeeze from the bottom, especially if you have small hands.

Hare's solution is to apply a further crucial stage of universalization: The universal rules which constitute genuinely ethical laws are those, and only those which everyone can agree to. My belief that everyone should squeeze toothpaste tubes from the bottom is what Hare would term fanatical, because I am, in effect, unreasonably insisting that everyone share my values. But who am I to set myself up as a legislator for values? Hare's solution is simple and very elegant: the only valid basis for ethical commands — the only way to avoid fanaticism — is to hold that each and every person's set of preferences counts for the same, regardless of the content of those desires.

One important consequence of this view that the ethically right action is one which maximizes the total surplus of satisfaction of desires, over non-satisfaction of desires, either for all intelligent beings or — in the case of Hare's former pupil Peter Singer — all sentient beings.

This position is known as preference utilitarianism. This was not, in fact, what Mill held. On the contrary, Mill is committed to the idea that what will make people truly 'happy' does not always consist in getting what they desire. Some pleasures have a higher value than others. It is possible to be wrong about about what will make you most happy. However, from Hare's perspective, this notion is merely a form of fanaticism. Who am I to judge what kinds of activity or satisfaction are the ingredients for happiness? It is up to each person to decide for him or herself.

It should be clear by now that Alvin's scenario, where the human race is infected by a viral plague which makes everyone want to commit suicide, is a prima facie challenge to Hare's preference utilitarianism, but not to Mill's utilitarianism. Mill would say that we must act on the assumption that there is a possibility that a person can achieve happiness which they thought was not possible, which may involve being forcibly prevented from committing suicide. To simply allow everyone to commit suicide because that's what they want is to accept that there is no possible future scenario where the human race, despite their presently suicidal tendencies, achieves a positive balance of happiness over unhappiness, or pleasure over pain.

The preference utilitarian has resources for dealing with this objection, strong though it may be. He can point out that no-one has just one desire. The desire for suicide, be it ever so strong and incapable of being argued with, nevertheless has the potential to clash with other things that a person desires. It is not fanatical, from Hare's point of view, to engage people in dialogue in order to get them to see the inconsistency in their desires, with the ultimate aim of changing their view of what they really want. Maybe. At any rate, there is sufficient unclarity in the idea of determining what a person 'really' desires, all things considered, to provide sufficient room for manoeuvre.

All this, of course, has no bearing on the question whether it is wrong on Hare's theory for an individual person to commit suicide. It is consistent with Hare's view to hold that an individual who sincerely wishes to do away with himself, who won't be terribly missed and is meanwhile making everyone's lives a misery with his constant complaining, ought to be permitted to have what he wants, the termination of his unhappy existence. The rest of humanity, who do not desire to commit suicide, will be better off, while the individual concerned will have his preference for non-existence satisfied.

This could not be further away from Kant. Suicide is wrong, in any circumstance whatsoever, because it contradicts the Categorical Imperative. However, I can quite understand the difficulty Amalie and her classmates are having with this idea.

First of all, Kant is not saying that by committing suicide I am using any other particular person as a means. It is true that other persons may be affected by action, but that is a contingent question. That would not suffice to show that suicide is wrong in any circumstances whatsoever — for example, if Robinson Crusoe committed suicide before he had the opportunity to meet Man Friday. Kant means is what he says, that in committing suicide, I am making 'humanity in my person' a mere means to an end, namely the cessation of my suffering.

By 'humanity in my person' Kant is referring to all of humanity, literally everyone who has ever or will ever exist. By taking my own life, I effectively demonstrate that I view humanity as such, as a means to my end. The value — as a member of the Kingdom of Ends — that I deny to my own person through the maxim of my action, 'I will end my life if it is not sufficiently pleasing,' I thereby deny to all. From a certain perspective, this is contempt for humanity on a truly colossal scale.

In order to see how one could be led to this conclusion, one needs to understand that Kant's view, by contrast with Mill and Hare, is profoundly anti-hedonistic. Pleasures and pains are the things that push and pull us in a deterministic universe, but they are not part of what gives human beings their ultimate value. Only rationality — the one thing that sets us apart from the rest of creation — is suitable for being an end. Moreover, this rationality has to be understood not as a mere tool, or 'slave of the passions' as Hume calls it, but as something with intrinsic value, in itself.

Happiness, misery, pleasure, pain — these are all things that pass. F.H. Bradley in Ethical Studies calls them 'perishing particulars'. The greatest sensual enjoyment, thrilling though it may be at the time, passes and is gone. You can savour the memory, but that too is just something that passes away in time. Value is permanent or it is nothing. A work of art, for example. You and I have value, insofar as we exercise our capacity for rationality for its own sake.

It is difficult to make coherent sense of this, except in teleological terms: human beings have a purpose, a teleology, which they do not give themselves but which is given to them, namely, the capacity to form a community governed by the principle of ethical respect for one another as ends, in which each rationally legislates for the actions of all.

The idea is not thousand miles removed from Plato's vision of the The Republic. Plato does not deny that human beings have desires and emotions, in the absence of which we would not have any capacity for a meaningful existence. However, it is only through the opportunity which they give for the exercise of rationality that desires and emotions acquire positive value, by fulfilling their assigned functions in the ordered soul: the law-respecting citizen of the ideal Republic. On any other view, we are no better than brute animals.

I am no Kantian — or Platonist — but I can appreciate the majesty of Kant's conception. We live in a very I-centered world, where society is seen as the mere sum of individual units, each pursuing its own agenda for consumption. Besides my likes and dislikes, I am nothing. This view not only justifies suicide but taken to its logical conclusion requires euthanasia — including non-voluntary euthanasia for those infants judged at birth sufficiently incapable of leading a 'happy' life.

Is that the only choice? Is there no middle way between a Brave New World and Kant's Kingdom of Ends? Possibly there is. Maybe the question of suicide is the key. Is there any way in which one could defend the view that suicide is wrong, but nevertheless must sometimes be permitted? Or is that mere double-think?