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Peter Benson considers Jacques Derrida’s ideas about migrants Perfectionism & Hate Speech Law Shaun O’Dwyer turns to a Japanese way of fighting hate speech Homelessness & the Limits of Hospitality Anya Daly shares her ideas and her first-hand experiences Prostitution & Instrumentalisation Rob Lovering critiques one argument against prostitution prostitutio n An Education In Diversity? Diversity? Christina Easton asks if liberal values can be forced on people
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Santa and Evil
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Editorial
The False Mirror A brief history of prejudice.
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en can’t multitask; women can’t resist shopping; the English have a sense of humour; the Germans don’t; philosophers spend their lives navel gazing; politicians can’t be trusted; and civil servants are boring. Stereotypes, preconceived ideas, prejudices: they are ubiquitous. ubiquitous. Sometimes they are annoying, sometimes funny, sometimes devastating. To philosophers they are the ultimate challenge. Philosophy has its demons to fight. Having always put an emphasis on a commitment to truth, philosophers philosophers have been quick to identify the obstacles that stood in their way of honouring this obligation. Though they couldn’t always agree on the origins, scope and definition of prejudice, it, in all its forms, emerges as one of their archenemies. The first philosophical philosophical musings about prejudice prejudice started in the classical age. Cicero talks about prejudice ( praeiust ( praeiusticium icium)) as the opposite of truth, associated with error. However, he makes clear that rather than being the result of ignorance, prejudice is born out of manipulation. In a legal context he explains that it means that jurors have listened to a particular account of a case over and over again, so that once a trial happens the lawyer who is arguing that version of the case has very little work to do to convince them of the veracity of of his words. The Enlightenment put particular particular emphasis on the problem of prejudice. Unfortunately, Unfortunately, it lost sight of Cicero’s valuable insight into the connection connection between manipulation manipulation and prejudice. Prejudice came to include a whole range of erroneously acquired positions. positions. Francis Bacon went so far as to argue that our natural understanding understanding is a “false mirror”of the world, as prejudice is a natural condition to which we are all prone: “The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.” “Prejudice” ( préjugé préjugé ) became a fashionable term before and during the French Revolution, a tool for condemning both religious tradition and the socio-political socio-political status quo. Voltaire illustrated the difference between prejudice and mature judgement: “But it is through through prejudice that you will respect respect a man dressed in certain clothes, walking gravely, and talking at the same time. Your parents have told you that you must bend to this man; you respect him before you know whether 4
Now December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now
he merits your respect; you grow in age and knowledge; you perceive that this man is a quack, made up of pride, interest, and artifice; you despise that which you revered, and prejudice yields to judgment.” The French French revolutionaries did not share share this optimism that we will outgrow prejudice as we mature. They took ‘prejudice’ ‘prejudice’ to denote all kinds of errors of the mind, which, in the worst cases, could only be eradicated by means of the guillotine! Most Enlightenment thinkers, thinkers, you will be relieved to learn, favoured less bloody ways of dealing with prejudice. Immanuel Kant distinguished between preliminary opinions and prejudice. Both are purely subjective, but there is nothing wrong with forming a preliminary preliminary view of an issue as long it is recognised as such, as a kind of work in progress. The problem with prejudices is that they are preliminary opinions that are mistaken for final conclusions. However, prejudice prejudice is not just an intellectual mistake; it has a serious moral component as well. Kant tells us that prejudice is a position that we take with respect to a ‘generalised other’, a moral client who needs to be taken into account in our thinking. Through imagination we need to be able to understand understand the perspective of this ‘other’. To be free of prejudice is thus only possible for someone who “can easily regard the matter from a very different point of view”, who can overcome her ‘logical egoism’ and relativise her self interest. If prejudice can be overcome, can it not be avoided altogether? Following Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer showed that all understanding is ‘permanently determined’ by what he calls pre-understand pre-understanding ing . In the end, he says, all understanding is always “reflection of a given preunderstanding.” understanding.” This means that whenever I need to understand someone or something I approach it with a certain preunderstanding. Why is this so unavoidable? The reason lies not in some genetic disposition but in our own past. Prejudices are based on our ‘historical reality’; reality’; in other words, if you have a past, you also have prejudices. This issue of Philosophy of Philosophy Now Now starts with a collection of articles which examine prejudice, hospitality hospitality towards strangers, and the different ways in which we as human beings perceive one another. So, what are the lessons to be learned here? Most, though not all, philosophers seem to believe that prejudice is cognitively impossible to avoid but that it can be rationally and/or and/or morally overcome overcome – although this may may be trickier than we realise. As always, critical thinking is required. And once we properly apply critical thinking, we soon see that while it is true that men can’t multitask, women can resist shopping. … Prejudiced, moi ? Anja Steinbauer Steinbauer
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Human brains to connect connect to cloud storage!
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rodents! Mini Mini human brains implanted in rodents!
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Psychologists study moral moral intuition
News
News reports by Anja Steinbauer.
Brain organoid
Merger 1: human brains & animals Four years ago scientists first developed a method of growing stem cells into miniature versions of human brains called brain organoids. These ‘mini brains’, until now grown in the lab, have many of the same characteristics as living human brains at an early developmental stage. Their structural similarity and the fact that they react in a similar way to stimuli such as drugs means that they are extremely useful for research into (for instance) Alzheimer’s Disease, since opportunities for empirical studies of living, fully-developed, fully-developed, human brains are obviously very restricted for ethical reasons. A new development has now given rise to moral reservations concerning organoids. Two teams of scientists have experimented with inserting these mini brains into the brains of rodents. The team of Professor Fred ‘Rusty’ Gage at the Salk Institute in California has successfully implanted human brain organoids into mature mouse brains, where they survived for up to two months. Meanwhile Dr Isaac Chen and his researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have implanted human organoids into the secondary visual cortices of eleven mature rats. The mini brains, which measured 2 mm across, again survived for around two months and formed numerous axons linking themselves to the rat brains, some up to 1.5 mm long. Cells in the organoids showed activity when the scientists shone light into the rats’ eyes, suggesting that the mini brains became functional within the rats brains. Both teams reported their work at a Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washing-
ton, DC in November. November. One moral concern is that the human cerebral organoids could grow in size and complexity within lab animals, to the point where we need to seriously talk about mini-brain mini-brain consciousness. Merger 2: human brains & machines At a recent session of the the Council on Foreign Relations on the future of Artificial Intelligence, the author, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted that “medical robots will go inside our brains and connect our neo-cortex to the smart cloud” by the year 2029. This prediction is part of Kurzweil’s conviction, shared by other experts in the field, that no part of our lives will remain unaffected by AI. Kurzweil is the main prophet of the Singularity – the idea that self-improving self-improving artifiartificial intelligence will create a situation within the next next few decades decades in which exponentially accelerating technological change becomes almost too fast to comprehend. Rather than AI endangering human survival as Stephen Hawking recently warned, Kurzweil Kurzweil envisages a merger merger of humans and AI: “My view is not that AI is going to displace us. It’s going to enhance us. It does already.” (Im)moral Intuitions Is gut feeling a good guide to moral evaluation and decision-making? A new study compared the effect of relying on intuition rather than deliberation on the resulting moral outcomes. Research psychologists Sarah Ward and Laura King of the University of Missouri presented study participants with a series of scenarios and in each case asked them to judge whether the action described was wrong. The researchers found that people who mostly relied on their moral intuitions tended to make harsher moral judgements and be less likely to reconsider their views, even if the behaviour under consideration caused no actual harm to anybody. Then they investigated whether asking people to reason about the scenarios at greater
length would reduce the individual differences in the judgments they made. Ward explains: “We consistently found that people who are more prone to rely on intuition condemned these actions …and what we found is that after people deliberdeliberated, in general they did condemn these actions less, but people who strongly relied on their intuitive instincts condemned these actions more harshly than others.” The Third Sex In Germany the Federal Constitutional Court decided in November that in future it will be possible for new parents to officially register the sex of their baby (and for individuals to register their own sex) as either “female”, “male” or… “X”. A further legal option will be to omit an entry concerning sex from the birth registration form altogether. This decision reflects the view of the German constitutional judges that persons who consistently do not feel themselves as belonging to either gender should not be disadvantaged in their fundamental rights. Austria is also considering the question and is due to announce its decision in 2018. Philosopher István Mészáros Dies Marxist philosopher philosopher István Mészáros Mészáros died on 1 October 2017 aged 86. In Budapest, the young Mészáros was a student of Georg Lukács and an opponent of Stalinism. After the end of the Hungarian Uprising in 1956, Mészáros fled his home country and subsequently accepted lectureships at universities in Italy, Canada and the UK. He was professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex for 15 years. In his influential work Marx’ work Marx’ Theory of Alienation (1970) he argued that distinguishing between an earlier and a later Marx was a mistake. After the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Mészáros believed capitalism could still be overcome and his book Beyond Marx (1995) made an important contribution to the discussion of the future of socialism.
December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now 5
Prejudice &
Xenos: Jacques Derrida on Hospitality Peter Benson tackles xenophobia with the help of Jacques Derrida and Plato.
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acques Derrida knew a thing or two about being an outsider. He was born of Jewish parents in 1930 in Algeria, at that time a French colony. Hence he was from birth a French citizen, although he did not set foot in France until he was nineteen. In 1942, by a decree of the wartime Vichy government, his citizenship was revoked because he was Jewish – without him being made a citizen of any other country. The major effect of this was his expulsion from the school he had previously been attending. So he was an Algerian who couldn’t speak Arabic; a Jew who was not a religious practitioner (nor could he read Hebrew); and an eventual immigrant to France as a pied-noir a pied-noir (the (the derogatory phrase used for the French from Algeria). These circumstanc circumstances es provided provided him with no solid sense of national identity. His subsequent academic career was pursued largely in unconventional institutions, and, in his later years, involved a great deal of travelling abroad. As a result, he was often the appreciative recipient of hospitality. American universities, in particular, frequently provided him with opportunities to teach and conduct research. He often spoke warmly of their welcoming environment. env ironment. His books were read mor e widely in their English translations than they were in France. Hard thought is always necessary to distinguish, from within a particular situation, factors of universal relevance. But the state of being an outsider, far from being a deterrent to philosophy, can be the very place from which philosophical questions are most readily raised. Furthermore, perhaps all of us today are immigrants of one kind or another. I have lived in Britain all my life and yet, with the substantial changes in society over that period, it is no longer the same country I was born into. I have thus, even by staying in one place, become become a kind of immigrant – a bemused entrant into a new country just as surely as those who have physically moved from their own land. All of us need to make the best we can of such changing circumstances. The The countries we we have lost had numerous faults, along with their admirable qualities. Only those with very selective memories could deny this. The Philosophy of the Stranger In his 1996 seminar Of Hospitality, Hospitality, Derrida discusses Plato’s dialogue The Sophist . This opens with Socrates being introduced to a visitor to Athens from Elea in southern Italy, the residence of several famous thinkers, such as Parmenides. Socrates expresses great pleasure in meeting this strange r. The Greek word for ‘stranger’ is xenos is xenos , also meaning ‘foreigner’. From this we get our wor d xenophobia xenophobi a. Socrates, by contrast, expresses a strong sense of xenophilia of xenophilia.. He wishes to hear the stranger’s views, in the hope that they might open new perspectives on philosophical questions. To facilitate this, Socrates steps back from his usual central role in Plato’s dialogues and hands his place over to the stranger, who then talks with Socrates’ friend Theaetetus. This stranger is never named in the dialogue; he remains simply a representa6 Philosophy Now Now December 2017/January 2018
tive of foreign ideas. Having stepped back, Socrates does not speak again for the entire dialogue. In becoming silent Socrates reveals that the place from which he usually speaks is one appropriately occupied by a stranger. That is, when he is acting as the philosophical enquirer, Socrates himself speaks as a stranger in his own world, world, questi questioning oning those things that others others take take for granted. granted. Although not all strangers are philosophers, philosoph ers, any viewpoint alien to our own can help us become aware of the perspectives we habitually and unthinkingly adopt. Obviously this doesn’t mean that we should immediately change our opinions to those of the stranger; but the more diverse perspectives we are able to comprehend, the less narrow and dogmatic our views will be. This interaction is a two stage process: first, an opening up to the other person in order to understand what what they are saying; saying; and only only then then considering the criticisms that criticisms that might be made of this new viewpoint. A too rapid jump to this second stage is a common fault. This process is why Plato Plato found dialogue to be the most appropriate form for philosophy, since dialogue cannot take place unless one first invites a stranger in, showing them hospitality rather than hostility. They may or may not bring us something of intellectual value, but without that initial hospitality we will never know. In the New Testament ‘Letter to the Hebrews’ (13.2) we are reminded: “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unaware.” Derrida’s Hospitality Raising these issues today, over ten years after Derrida’s death, we will w ill all be aware a ware of their th eir relevance relev ance to events e vents and circumcircu mstances filling our newspapers. In 1996, in his essay On Cosmopolitanism, mopolitanism , Derrida wrote about the rights of asylum-seekers, refugees, and immigrants, paying attention to practical proposals as well as general principles. In particular, he discussed a proposal, current at that time, to establish cities of refuge that would be open to all, of any nationality or none. Here too he evoked a Biblical precedent (from Numbers 35:9-32) advocating cities to which anyone anyone could flee from persecution. persecution. Nothing came of this idea, and today the sheer magnitude of the flow of refugees from the chaos of the Middle East would make such an approach impractical. Politics, diplomacy, charity, and hard work will all be necessary, and philosophy has only a small contribution to make to this crisis. But that contribution can still provide guidance to the other efforts, and it is in this that Derrida’s discussions of hospitality are of particular value. What’s more, they exemplify a general feature of Derrida’s political thought whose significance has not always been recognized. There’s a dilemma dilemma which Derrida asserts to be be an inescapable feature of the concept of hospitality, which we see vividly revived in each successive refugee crisis, and in every discussion about immigration. On the one hand, there is a moral imperative to show hospitality, especially to people in distress or fleeing from danger; and on the other hand, the total abandonment of bor-
Perception of course on particularities of circumstance. There is no simple calculus we can apply to resolve each dilemma, no one definitive way to respond appropriately in each particular case. However, both sides of the dilemma must always be kept in mind. The idealistic claims of an unrestrained hospitality, though impossible to follow as a law, must never be completely silenced by claims of impracticality. Derrida on Political Dilemmas
In his later writings Derrida repeatedly uncovers similar dilemmas inherent in the central terms of our contemporary political thinking, such as Justice, Democracy, and Human Rights. He does this not to dismiss these concepts, but to show the doubled attention that each requires of us. Failures in these fields occur when one side of the dilemma temporarily obliterates our awareness of the other. Another Anoth er common com mon contem co ntemporar porar y example exam ple is i s in the th e dilemma between freedom and public safety. Unfortunately, Derrida’s mode of analysing these concepts, through the process of ‘deconstruction’, does not provide immediate answers to urgent questions. Nevertheless, it yields a more clear-sighted awareness of how responsive action must begin, and shows that we cannot evade our responsibility by the use of general formulaic solutions. Take the case of Democracy, Democ racy, for example: examp le: the value of this notion beg ins to deteriorate as soon as people imagine that they have achieved a fully-functioning democracy in the institutions they have established. For it is under the cloak of this complacency that factions begin to utilize those same democratic Jacques Derrida Derrida,, institutions as the means for attaining and maintainGail Campbell ing their own power. There is no fixed solution which 2017 will permanently permanently eradicate eradicate this this problem. problem. Rather, Rather, our laws and institutions need to be continually modified towards greater and greater democratic inclusiveness and ders would obliterate the home into which they are being transparency, transparency, without imagining that this process can ever reach invited. All borders have some degree of permeability; but if it becomes absolutely open, then the border itself is abolished, perfection. We can only commit ourselves to a ‘democracy to and there is no longer any place of safety – any home – to enter. come’, to use Derrida’s phrase, rather than to any current inadDerrida sets this dilemma out clearly in Of Hospitality: Hospitality: “How equate approximation of democracy. can we distinguish between a guest and a parasite? In principle, And so it is with with hospita hospitality lity too. We should should never plump ourthe difference is straightforward, but for that you need a law; selves up with the bland conviction that we are a hospitable people. hospitality, reception, the welcome offered, have to be submitRather, we must be constantly alert as to how we can become more hospitable, whilst avoiding a catastrophic collapse of the ted to a basic and limiting jurisdiction” (p.59). ‘Hospitality’ region of safety we envisage in the word ‘home’. So Derrida’s is assumes the ability to provide a safe haven, a shelter from storms, not a philosophy that offers definitive answers to these dilemand like a biological membrane, the border must inevitably be mas, since such an answer would necessarily be wrong, if we are selective when allowing itself to be crossed. If refugees fleeing from persecutors find their way through an opening, it cannot dealing with a true dilemma. Rather, it alerts us to the fact that be equally open to those pursuing them. Every opening to t o others we are are always always in in the situation situation of of never never having having done done enough. enough. The implies associated closings. As Derrida explains: “Between an hospitable person or country should be seeking at all times to be unconditional law or an absolute desire for hospitality on the more hospitable, alert to any opportunities to move in this direcone hand and, on the other, a law, a politics, politi cs, a conditional ethics, tion, never saying, “we’ve done enough, we can’t do more,” rather, there is a distinction, radical heterogeneity, but also indissociaalways seeking practical ways to do more than we have. bility. One calls forth, involves, or prescribes the other” (p.147). © PETER BENSON 2017 Benson is no stranger to to philosophy, having studied it at The particular balance between between these two indissociable indissociable aspects Peter Benson Cambridge University. of the notion of hospitality, openness and closedness, will depend December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now 7
Prejudice &
Perfectionism & Hate Speech Law Shaun O’Dwyer on reconciling free speech with protection against hate speech.
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n this era of growing ethno-nationalism and xenophobia in Europe and America, and indeed, worldwide, debates over hate speech are intensifying. Decent people argue that the terrifying rhetoric of extreme right wing groups online and on the streets – and escalating confrontations – demonstrate the necessity of hate speech laws. Supporters of freedom of speech have responded that the non-coercive speech of all should be protected – incl uding the free speech of racists, neo-Nazis, and bigots. In diverse liberal societies, they argue, it is inconsistent for the state, or even powerful social media platforms such as Facebook, to protect some expressions of ideas while banning others merely because some groups object to it. It is also likely, they argue, that hate speech laws or bans can be weaponized against their advocates, such that polemical ideas by minority activists or leftist radicals can also be prohibited when their right-wing or authoritarian enemies turn hate speech prohibitions to their own advantage. The stalemated stalemated debate between these two positions positions suggests suggests a sort of ‘incommensurability of values’ that Isaiah Berlin once wrote about – between between liberty on the one side and human dignity and civic equality on the other. They’re all prized and recognized to have tremendously beneficial consequences when realized in law and in custom. Yet an increase in free speech often involves some diminishing of dignity. Fr eedom for the swaggering bully takes away equality and dignity for those at the bottom of the playground pecking order. Conversely, enforcing equality and respect for dignity involves some diminishment in liberty. The would-be bully keeps his thoughts and urges to himself, but perhaps so do many others, as the vigilant headmistress casts her shadow over a quieter, seemingly more egalitarian playground. I want to suggest that a compromise between freedom and dignity over the problem of hate speech might be possible. My perfectionism. Perfecapproach is inspired by a philosophy called perfectionism tionists typically hold that there are objective values or goods whose promotion contributes to morally valuable ways of life, nurturing the ‘better angels’ of human nature; and also that objective moral value means some ways of life are more valuable than others. Many (but not all) moral perfectionists think that the state has a role in promoting the better ways of life by passing legislation and distributing resources to enhance different goods or promote different values, in areas such as welfare, education, the arts and sciences, employment, and civic morality. For such perfectionists, laws against hate speech make sense in terms of promoting more mutually-respectful ways of living in diverse societies. A New Way Of Opposing Hate Speech Perfectionism has a respectable pedigree in liberal thought extending back to John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant; but this pedigree is not enough to save it from the objections of free 8 Philosophy Now Now December 2017/January 2018
speech advocates whenever perfectionism is invoked to promote hate speech law. The free speech advocates will complain that hate speech law is itself unacceptably coercive and paternalistic – that it requires the state to abandon the value-neutrality that it ought to occupy in a diverse liberal society, in order to play favorites with values or ideas of the good life that are the sub ject of reasonable disagreement disagreement between citizens. One such point of disagreement concerns whose idea of the good life should be considered so detrimental for the overall good of society that its expression must be regulated or prohibited. However, I have in mind a mild liberal perfectionist approach appr oach to hate speech – call it ‘perfectionism lite’ – which envisages a non-coercive role for the state in encouraging the good life of its citizens. So rather than criminalizing hate speech, doing which impinges upon another good the state also regards itself itsel f as bound to uphold – the freedom of speech – the state stat e passes laws exhorting citizens to stand up to hate speech. As a free speech speech liberal I have my own qualms about perfecperfectionism lite, but I think it worthwhile to explore how it could both justify hate speech law whilst also opposing criminalizing hate speech. As it turns out, there is an example of non-coercive non-c oercive hate speech law to hand which can help us think through this question, for in 2016 the government of Japan passed just such a law. Two to three th ree years year s ago rac ist demonstrati demon strations ons against aga inst resire sident ethnic Koreans (Zainichi ) had become almost daily occurrences in Japan. The rage behind these demonstrations was stoked by a combination of political issues, including Japanese disagreements with South Korea over colonial and wartime history, growing diplomatic tensions with North Korea, and resentments over the perceived ‘special rights’ given to Zainichi. Ultraright-wing organizations demonstrated outside Zainichi schools or in the Korea Towns of Tokyo and Osaka, displaying or shouting slogans such as “Exterminate all Koreans!”; “We came here to kill North Koreans!”; “Cockroaches!”; “Kick these low-life Korean maggots out of Japan!”, while similar abuse proliferated on internet forums. A former leader of one such ultra-rightist outfit stood in Tokyo’s 2016 gubernatorial election, attracting 1.74 percent of the vote – a still unnerving total of 114,000 votes – on an anti-immigration ‘Japan First’ platform. Subsequently, debates about the criminalization of hate speech took place amongst politicians, scholars and media commentators, especially since international organizations such as the United Nations urged Japan to pass such laws. However, these debates were framed by a strong awareness of speech freedoms, since Articles 19 to 21 of Japan’s post-war constitution provide robust protections for freedom of conscience, speech, and religion. Judicial experts and politicians cited these articles to highlight the difficulties of criminalizing hate speech. The hate speech law law that was finally passed passed in 2016 2016 reflected reflected
Perception this awareness. Although this legislation admits the “tremendous pain and suffering” that “unfair discriminatory speech and behavior” inflicts upon resident foreigners and their descendants in Japan, it provides no criminal law remedies: instead it directs national and local governments to use publicity campaigns and education to “increase public awareness of the necessity of eliminating unfair, discriminatory speech.” I wonder if such legislation could provide inspiration for perfectionistminded hate speech statutes in nations which, like Japan, have strong constitutional protections for freedom of speech? Difficulties with Criminalizing Hate Speech Many Japanese Japan ese progressive progr essivess want hate speech sp eech to be criminalcr iminalized, and are not satisfied with the hate speech law as it currently stands. I’m inclined to think it should be left as it is, since the strongest arguments in favour of criminalizing hate speech do not stand up to scrutiny, as I intend to show. One way to define and justify hate speech law which some legal philosophers recommend, is through comparison with defamation and libel law. Defamation involves publically making untrue statements calculated to harm a person’s reputation and dignity. Hate speech, according to these legal philosophers, can be understood as a group libel or defamation – that is, as untrue, abusive, dehumanizing, threatening and insulting speech calculated to damage the social standing and dignity of people as members of a particular particular group, group, and thus stir up hatred against them. The degree of damage this inflicts upon the collective dignity of a group, and the damage such speech does to civic order through the accumulation of public statements asserting, directly or indirectly, that members of that group do not deserve equal status as citizens or as human beings, warrants a criminal law remedy, they argue. One objection to this idea of hate speech as a ‘group libel’ is that claims about damage to collective dignity and standing can be used to criminalize many kinds of group criticism, as a means to shutting down freedom of speech. These include ‘defamation of religion’ laws to protect re ligious groups from insults against their faith, including satire or criticism; and Turkey’s Article 301, 301 , which proscribes proscribe s ‘insults to the Turkis h nation’ – such as public statements asserting the truth of the Armenian Genocide. Defenders argue that hate speech laws are different because they are intended to protect vulnerable minorities. Such minorities have long memories of discrimination, subjugation, or even genocide, and are historically vulnerable to speech that diminishes their social standing, rendering them insecure and fearful for their survival. This response response will not satisfy critics, critics, who may point out that such a rationale could be reverse-engineered by white nationalists and religious sectarians eager to present themselves as minorities vulnerable to persecution. This might appear to be an absurd objection, but it is unwise to consider ‘absurdity’ only from the point of view of a philosophy discussion, rather than, say, a national election campaign harnessing populist, ethnonationalist resentments. Another sophisticated sophist icated way to define hate speech is to think thi nk of it as what linguists and philosophers of language call a ‘speech act’. Speech acts do not simply describe: they are meant to do something or have an intended effect . A classic example of a
speech act is the one uttered by marriage celebrants who, in pronouncing a couple to be married, make it so. In the 1980s and 90s, some feminist philosophers argued that pornography is a speech act that subjugates and silences women; and since that time, race and gender theorists have explored how hate speech works (or fails to work) as a speech act to subordinate people of colour and sexual minorities. Although not not all of these theorists theorists favour criminal law law remedies for hate speech, there is some consensus on how hate speech works as a speech act. act. Imagine Imagine a white man outside a segregated swimming pool in the South of the United States in the midtwentieth century, looking menacingly at some black people passing ‘too close’ to him and snarling “no n-----s allowed.” He is doing something in saying this: he is enforcing a legal ban against black people entering the pool. In doing this he is supposedly ‘putting them in their place’ as an inferior class of persons. Such statements also have the intended effects of intimidating people into deferential obedience and pre-emptively silencing opposition. opposition. We need not even imagine the white man there: a sign bearing the same message will do a similar job. On this understanding hate speech is a speech act which oppresses vulnerable minorities, puts them in an inferior place, inflicts fear, humiliation, and insecurity on them, and silences them. So the argument here is that hate speech should be criminalized in recognition of the harms that it does and causes, and to prevent the subjection of minority groups. Obviously, substantial institutional and social props need to be present for hate speech acts to work so effectively. Imagine a white man pulling that same stunt outside a public pool today. Without the backing backing of racist institutions, institutions, conventions conventions and laws – and lynch mobs – such speech acts can no longer work as they were intended to. There may still be intimidation and fear; but more overwhelmingly, there will be defiance, outrage, condemnation of the incident on national and social media, public denun-
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Prejudice & ciations by government officials, and, possibly, arrests of the perpetrators under anti-intimidation statutes. Although these are good and necessary developments, it makes a problem for describing hate speech as an oppressive speech act in modern liberal democracies, in that it’s difficult to prove that minority groups are so homogeneous that hate speech will uniformly work wor k against them, forci ng them into the inferior, subjugated and injured status that warrants criminal sanction against their abusers. That is, under defamation law, or criminal laws covering threat and intimidation, it is in principle relatively straightforward for individuals to individuals to go to court and present their case that they have suffered injury to their reputations, or been intimidated by prejudiced abuse and threats. Things are less straightforward for groups comprising hundreds of thousands, or millions, of people, perhaps definable as a historically vulnerable vulnerable minority, minority, but divided divided by opinion, opinion, values, values, wealth, occupation, and social status. Compare the case of a tenured African American American professo professorr at a leading leading American American universit universityy who is subsub jected to a racial slur by a white student, student, but but is backed up by college anti-racism codes, and supported by colleagues, administrators, and the student body, with that of an impoverished working-class African-American teenager subjected to the same slur by a white policeman confronting him on a street. Many contextual factors, beginning beginning with differences differences or simsimilarities in social and legal power between abusers and the abused, can influence how much hate speech actually works as intended, or backfires on the abusers. In light of such doubts, liberal opponents of hate speech law can mobilize the ‘harm principle’ to reject criminalization of hate speech. The harm principle says that the state is only warranted in using coercion against citizens to prevent the citizens from coercing or harming their fellow citizens. But it is often not clear how much hate speech harms on a collective scale. Yet even if it’s hard to identify identi fy a common denominator for the harms hate speech does to internally diverse di verse minorities, surely things will be much worse if governments governments do nothing to ban it. Hate speech acts may not always work as intended; but their malignant intent remains, and will be recognized as such, contributing to fear and insecurity amongst minority groups, especially when those speech acts escalate into violent physical acts. However, in our era of renewed nationalism, there are signs that criminal hate speech laws are not working as intended. For instance, Canada’s criminal hate speech laws are stringently defined yet rarely enforced, and there have been modest increases in hate crimes there in the past three years, especially against Muslims. France has more frequently enforced criminal hate speech laws, but anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic hate crimes and xenophobic political movements have all sharply increased there in recent years. Germany has ‘incitement to hatred laws’, but it has struggled to cope with rises in violent hate crimes and hate speech in the 1990s and in more recent years, and a nd it too t oo has witnessed w itnessed a rise i n xenophobic xenoph obic and a nd antianti immigration political movements.
to justify coercive state intervention, and that there are also prudential reasons for opposing such laws, because of their questionable efficacy, and because they can be abused. They will also likely agree that given its malignant, discriminatory intent, which conflicts con flicts with wi th important importa nt values such as the dignity digni ty and equality of all citizens irrespective of creed or ethnicity, etc, hate speech is a serious moral problem for liberal societies. But they will still disagree on how to deal with it. So I will conclude with some cautious remarks in favour of Japan’s Japan ’s hate h ate speech legislatio legisl ation, n, and a nd summari s ummarize ze some s ome objeco bjections that free speech advocates like myself might still have to it. In the year since its passage, this law has proven effective in incentivizing local government and police authorities to use existing statutes against more menacing hate speech, online or on the street. Moreover, in sending a signal to wider society that hate speech is officially condemned, it is encouraging civil society activists, including from minority groups, to organize counter-protests and impose moral penalties on those who express hate. Coincidentally or not, anti-Korean demonstrations have halved in the past year, and so has the intensity of the language used in them. Substantial objections remain, however. First there is the problem of paternalism, implicit in the sort of hate speech law that perfectionism lite supports. For instance, in declaring that the public needs to undergo education and consciousness-raising campaigns to help eliminate hate speech, Japan’s hate speech law appears to judge citizens incapable by themselves of conducting their lives in a morally upright fashion, instead assuming that they need to be educated to do the right thing. Liberal critics of perfectionism argue that such judgements are unacceptable, since they deny to citizens what Jonathan Quong has described as “their moral status as free and equal citizens.” Second, the strong language used to denounce hate speech in the Japanese legislation – “unfair speech and action… will not be tolerated” and “tolerating (its existence) is impermissible” – may leave the door open for mission creep towards coercive measures to eliminate free speech that is argued to be hate speech, generating the sort of problems we’ve looked at. Third, the formulat f ormulation ion of any hate ha te speech speec h law puts in i n the hands of the state the power to define which minority groups are affected by it. In the case of Japan’s hate speech law, they are defined as “persons originating exclusively from a country or region other than Japan or their descendants” and this definition refers most obviously to Japan’s Zainichi minority. Such a definition can provoke objections over who it excludes, such as indigenous people, or religious minorities, and whether there are convincing reasons for such exclusions. These objections may not be decisive, decisive, although they do moti vate my my own wariness about even even perfectionist perfectionist lite justifications justifications for hate speech law. Still, I remain open-minded that these objections could be neutralized by carefully formulated, noncoercive hate speech statutes proposed wherever there is robust constitutional and social support for speech freedoms. © SHAUN O’DWYER 2017
The Japanese Way
Both free speech advocates and perfectionist promoters of noncriminal hate speech laws can agree that hate speech does not represent a clear enough case of collective harm or oppression 10 Philosophy Now Now December 2017/January 2018
Shaun O’Dwyer is an associate professor in the Faculty of Languages and Cultures at Kyushu University, Japan. He has published widely on topics such as pragmatist philosophy and modern Confucian thought, and moonlights as a journalist in his spare time.
Perception
Homelessness
& the Limits of Hospitality
Anya Daly says we’ll solve homelessness only when we see it as our problem. “No face can be approached with empty hands and closed home.” “The need of the other is my spiritual need.” Emmanuel Levinas
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oming home on the tram my gaze met that of a young man shouldering a carry-all – heavy, and torn in parts. I looked away quickly. Clearly that carry-all carried all his belongings, and, I hoped, food for the wet, icy night ahead under the bridge. I knew I was going going home to company and a hearty soup. Part of me wanted to suggest he come back and share soup with us; but the greater part was fearful: he could be dangerous, perhaps a drug user, and even if neither of these, how could we then turn him out into the cold again? The limits of my hospitality – my fear. This article article explores the issue of homelessness homelessness from the perspective of someone who has experienced homelessness, as someone who has worked with the homeless and heard the stories of ‘our friends on the street’, as a mother distressed to see other mothers’ children, no matter their age, in such dire circumstances, and as a philosopher driven to interrogate the hidden assumptions and beliefs motivating our choices, judgments, and behavior. I wish to stress that homelessness must be addressed from the philosophical perspective not only with regard to the individual, but also with regard to the individual as belonging to the ‘we’. This ‘we’ must include all the people involved, from the homeless person laying out her swag under the bridge, to the policy-makers earning fabulous salaries. salaries. I’ll propose that a deeper understanding of what’s called ‘double incorporation’ incorporation’ is a crucial step towards galvanizing political will to implement solutions that have already been identified. The first fir st part of this t his article arti cle will wil l relate relat e my experience expe rience with regard to homelessness to provide context. The second part will examine some philosophical considerations around the notion of ‘home’. I am taking a phenomenological approach to this discussion, not an analytic approach which depends predomi-
nantly on arguments. For phenomenology, the world is not reducible to propositions, and so it depends on a wide repertoire of philosophical methods – detailed descriptive analysis and evocations as well as arguments. Philosophical understanding, for phenomenology, is as much a ‘showing’ as a ‘telling’. The Lived Experience of Homelessness The problem of homelessness homelessne ss first hit me when I was living in Paris when there was a huge housing crisis. At one point there were tents all along the the Canal Saint Saint Martin and filling the Place de la République. There were many, many beggars on the streets. I remember for the last months of one winter I would cross the canal at a small bridge under which whic h lived an old man and a young woman. In the the morning morning I would regularly see her preparing herself for her work day – doing her hair, putting on her make-up, and tidying away her bedding. Clearly, she had a job but the salary could not cover rent. That was shocking for me, especially when I learnt of the rich people who had many vacant apartments they did not want to rent, either because they were waiting for the rental market to give hig her returns or because it was more advantageous for them to just keep the apartments empty, solely as investments. In my fifth year in France I moved to Toulouse and there suffered a life-threatening accident. On my return to Australia I was homeless because I was unable to work. Fortunately for me, I had family and friends who ensured I always had a roof over my head. That year I lived in six different situations before before gaining affordable housing. Even in the comparatively favorable situation of being cared for, I was deeply shaken in my sense of self because of the loss of independence, because I had no base that was mine. So once I had regained my health I volunteered with the Salvation Army, raising funds, and also with the Orange Sky Laundry, a mobile laundry service for the homeless established by two young Brisbane men and run entirely with volunteers. It now operates in fourteen cities in Australia . The service is as much much about about the conversations conversations as getting the laundry done. The site I worked at in Melbourne was in the posh part of the central city, in what is known as the Paris end of Collins Street. In fact we parked the van and set up our chairs directly outside Dior, adjacent to a small terrace area that the homeless people had taken over. They called it ‘the community kitchen’, since from there they organised collections of food donations from the various cafés around the inner city. Of course the businesses were not happy about this – these destitute people were occupying prime real estate – and eventually the city council cleared out all their belongings, removed the seats, and installed plant boxes. So what had been effectively the equivalent of a homebase for them was destroyed. Some were given emergency accommodation, but most had to find another place to doss. It felt good to be doing something. The practical aid, the solDecember 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now 11
Prejudice & idarity, and the sympathy were clearly appreciated; and, I must confess, it did help to somewhat relieve my own distress and guilt about their desperate and, more often than not, deteriorating lives. To an extent, we are all complicit in this terrible injustice. We have allowed the neoliberal agenda to override our consciences, to override our fellow-feeling, and to allow us to conveniently ignore the core value of ‘fair play’. Most certainly we can say that some of these people have contributed, sometimes significantly, to their own wretched situations; but nonetheless, the systemic injustices are pervasive and pernicious. The paths to sleeping rough are numerous: domestic violence; sexual abuse; debt; psychiatric problems; unemployment; unemployment; underemployment; the bank foreclosing on the home or farm; PTSD following military service; incapacitating incapacitating accidents; drug and alcohol addiction; not having the means to get back to a home country; having relied on the support of friends and family one time too many; family break-up; housing which is dangerous because of drugs and violence, etc. This is clearly not a ‘one size fits all’ problem; it is various and multifaceted. In August 2016 I participated in a one-day workshop titled ‘Homelessness and Housing Insecurity’. One observation from the only participating anthropologist was the need to consider factors upstream from the outcome of homelessness: nothing less than critiquing the economic system which has without question set the stage for it, and for many other social injustices which in turn feed into the injustice of homelessness. But in my view we need to go even further upstream to look for causes in our conceptions of ourselves; specifically, in the persisting delusion of our radical separateness from others. This individualistic view of self underpins the sense of entitlement of many (not all) of the wealthy, who refus refusee to help. While the oppos opposing ing view view of of interdependency is slowly gaining currency, it has yet to filter through to tangible outcomes with policy-makers, politicians, the big end of town, and the general public. Homelessness is not just a problem for the individual enduring it. It has direct consequences for the wider society, including for you and me. And simply, we must ask ourselves, what kind of society do we want to live in? So with this in mind, in the next part of this article I wish to venture into the philosophical philosophical questions questions concerning the nature nature of the self with regard to this issue of homelessness. I will do so by drawing on the work of key figures in the phenomenological tradition – notably Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, and Scheler. Self, Place, Belonging & Hospitality In his book Totality and Infinity (1961, trans 1969), in the chapter titled ‘Dwelling’, Emmanuel Levinas offers an extended meditation on the notions of ‘dwelling, habitation, home and hospitality’. For Levinas, hospitality operates in two domains – the ethical and the political. Within the ethical domain, the individual has a moral obligation to give shelter under their own roof. In the political domain, as citizens of a country, to be hospitable we must welcome all those who truly seek refuge into our homeland. Levinas sets out various conceptions of ‘home’. Home is an which offers offers protecti protection on from from the elements elements and enemies; enemies; implement which as an implement it may also be a source of pleasure, pleasure , such as when using a good tool can provide immense satisfaction. Home may also be considered a possession which possession which is convertible into money. Levinas also describes home as the place of recollection – a place of 12 Philosophy Now Now December 2017/January 2018
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gathering the self, thus providing providin g our launching place for our activity in the world. Finally, home is a place of interiority – of safety, intimacy, and welcome. It is home in these last two senses that I wish to explore explore:: home home as the shelter shelter from external external threats, threats, and as as a place to recollect the self – to revive and to gather resources needed to venture into the world and contribute to society. As Levinas Le vinas writes: write s: “To dwell, is not the simple si mple fact f act of the anonymous reality of a being cast into existence, as a stone one casts behind oneself; it is recollection, a coming t o oneself, a retreat home with oneself as in a land of refuge, which answers to a hospitality, an expectancy, a human welcome” (p.156). Here we can see Levinas Levi nas expressing a view common to many philophi losophical and psychological traditions, of home as being a symbol for the self. And there is an inside and an outside to th is self. He says: “Man abides in the world as having come to it from a private domain, from being at home with himself, to which at each moment he can retire… he goes forth outside from an
Perception inwardness. Yet this inwardness opens up in a home which is situated in the outside – for the home, as a building, belongs to a world of objects” (p.152). Like the embodied self, the home has both an interior and an exterior; and as there are doors and windows for the home, so too there are also the self’s expressive doors of face, gesture and language. Neither the home nor the self are impenetrable interiorities, entirely separate from others and the outside world. These challenges to the interiority and and exteriority divide divide are also key to the thought of another French phenomenologist, Maurice MerleauM erleau-Ponty, Ponty, who argues for an intrinsic intri nsic interdeinte rdependence between self and other.in his book The Phenomenology of Perception (1962). For Merleau-Ponty, subjectivity is an inter subjectivity, subjectivity, and otherness is otherness is a category both both internal to and conconstitutive of the self. It is due to this self-alienation internal to the subject that other selves, alter egos, and all interactions with other people, become possible. This way of thinking about about our intersubjectivity intersubjectivity can can provide a useful means of inquiring into homelessness. It is clear that something philosophically interesting is going on in our profound distress with regard to the plight of the homeless. I propose it is because the sight of homeless people challenges our sense of entitlement and also our sense of self and belonging. It makes us recognise how fragile these things in fact are; that we too could potentia p otentially lly become v ictim to any number n umber of the misfortunes, such as have been visited on those living under bridges and on streets. There is is also also the fear of of those those living living an unrooted unrooted life, life, without without community and therefore without the demands and constraints of social belonging. The homeless person becomes truly alien. As philosopher Anthon y Steinbock has proposed in his article ‘Homelessness and the Homeless Movement’ ( Human ( Human Studies , 17 (2), 1994), drawing on the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, our own ‘homeworlds’ are co-constituted by the ‘alienworld’ of the homeless. The homeless do not belong to our community; they do not share our culture, our values, our social etiquette, our ways of eating and urinating. This is why our efforts are usually inadequate to addressing the problems of homelessness: one of the dangers for any intervention is that the homeless person becomes a project of the helper intervening; and then what inevitably comes into play is an almost coercive normalizing of the homeless person. The challenge is to offer support in a way that does not violate their autonomy, nor render them predictable, controllable, and acceptable according to our own standards. The Double Incorporation
Here I want to engage with the key phenomenological idea that, just as Merleau-P Mer leau-Ponty onty asserted, asser ted, subjectivit subje ctivityy is an intersubjecinte rsubjectivity; or as the German phenomenologist Max Scheler describes the double incorporation of the ‘I’ within the ‘we’ and the ‘we’ within the ‘I’ in The Nature of Sympathy (1913, trans 2009): “community is in some sense implicit in every individual, and that man is not only part of society, but that society and the social bond are an essential part of himself: that not only is the ‘I’ a member of the ‘we’, but also that the ‘we’ is a necessary member of the ‘I’” (pps.229, 230). This view rejects reje cts the idea of the isol ated, atomistic sub ject, and instead says that in the core of our subjectivity is both the
‘I’ perspective and the ‘we’ perspective. When identification centers solely on the ‘I’, the person is dominated by individualism and competition. However, when the sense of self embraces the ‘we’, the values become collective ones and the orientation is characterized by cooperation. The more the circle of ‘we’ is widened, the more mo re the subject is ava ilable to others. other s. The sub ject with the ‘we’ orientation orient ation identifies ident ifies as being one among others, as belonging – whether at the level of family, community, species, or at its most expanded, as one sentient being among others. Empathic responsiveness is not guaranteed, however, because if the ‘we’ is defined narrowly and constrained only to certain others – to family, race, the religious community, etc – the excluded do not arouse any sense of fellow-feeling, and in fact they may rather incite fear, aversion, hatred and aggression. We see this also with the stigmatization of the homeless. Despite their tragic circumstances, they are not recognized as deserving of a place, of belonging: they are excluded. And it is this alienation even more than the physical discomforts of sleeping rough and the challenges of survival that leads to the psychological deterioration of the homeless. They are living within a society socie ty to which they do not belong, be long, and from wh ich there is no welcome. This, I propose, because of the double incorporation, incorporation, is a violence towards them at the most basic level of their sense of self. And this is why so many homeless people display symptoms of compounded trauma, combining the impacts of whatever led them to the streets in the first place with their rejection rejection and exclusion exclusion from the wider society. society. So the question is, how can we get especially the politicians and the big end of town to expand their sense of ‘we’? Albert Einstein captures exactly the core of the issue when he writes: “A human being is part of a whole, called by us ‘universe’ – a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” (Letter from Einstein to a father on the death of his son, 12/02/50.)
Homeless people are citizens with rights to vote; but their other basic human rights are not being respected: the right to a home, a shelter from the elements and from external threat, a base from which to carve out a place in the working world and the social world. Homelessness is my problem and your problem. Solutions to homelessness lie not just in social action, policy, or economics, but most fundamentally in our conceptions of ourselves and our society. When we can break out of the prison of the delusion of our separateness, and meet these others in solidarity, then the political will to address homelessness, and many other social injustices, will be found. © DR ANYA DALY 2017
Merleau-Ponty and the Ethics Anya Daly has recently recently published Merleau-Ponty (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). She currently of Intersubjectivity Intersubjectivity (Palgrave holds an Irish Council Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at University College Dublin, and is working on a project concerning the subjective subjective bases of violence, destructiveness and ethical failure. December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now 13
Prejudice & Prostitution & Prostitution & Instrumentalization Rob Lovering argues that a popular argument against prostitution doesn’t work
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s you are undoubtedly aware, prostitution is illegal throughout much of the world. You might also be aware that opposition to its criminalization is on the rise. Amnesty International endorsed its decriminalization not long ago, followed by numerous organizations such as the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, Human Rights Watch and, particularl y noteworthy for us, philosophe rs such as Peter Singer, Philip Pettit, and Patricia Marino. Recent cover stories for New for New York Magazine and The New York Times Magazine have asked: ‘Is Prostitution Just Another Job?’ and ‘Should Prostitution Be a Crime?’ So how strong are the reasons for treating prostitution as a crime? Some people advocate the continued prosecution of prostitution on grounds to do with the safety or well-being of its participants, or its effects on the wider community. However, another reason also frequently given is that prostitution is immoral. As Donna Hughes, a professor of women’s studies, puts it, “Most existing laws concerning prostitution were formulated on the assumption that prostitution is immoral activity, with women being the most immoral participants.” ( Making Making the the Harm Visible, Visible, 1999). The question naturally arises: Is prostitution Is prostitution immoral? Various philosophers have put for ward arguments for thinking so, one of the most notable being that by engaging in sexual activity with someone for payment, the prostitute instrumentalizes himself instrumentalizes himself or herself. (Henceforth in this article I’ll limit myself to a single set of gender-specific pronouns: she, her, and herself). Let’s call this the instrumentalization argument for the immorality of prostitution. But what does this even eve n mean? m ean? Well, Well , here h ere are two main underunde rstandings of what it means to instrumentalize oneself: (i) To use oneself, or to allow oneself to be used, as a mere means to an end; or (ii) To block, damage, or destroy one’s self-integration. Let’s examine these two understandings of instrumentalizing oneself more closely, and in the process examine the version of the instrumentalization argument that goes with each. Being Used as a Mere Means to an End The version vers ion of the argument ar gument that th at relies relie s upon the first fir st understanding of instrumentalizing oneself has its roots in the ethical theories of Immanuel Kant. Kant’s famous Categorical Imperative says that it is wrong to use a person purely or merely as a means to an end, since to do so is to treat them not as a person but as an object. This is so, Kant adds, even if the person in question is yourself. What exactly is meant by using oneself or allowing oneself to be used as a mere means to an end is an issue over which much ink has been spilled, but one common understanding of it is for oneself to agree to ends to which one cannot in principle agree (by coercion, manipulation or for any 14 Philosophy Now Now December 2017/January 2018
other reason). More specifically, to be used as a mere means to an end is to agree to behavior – be it one’s own or another’s – to which one, as a rational moral agent, cannot rationally agree. (‘Rational moral agent’ – hereafter just ‘agent’ – is an ethical jargon term for someone who is capable of making, and act ing on the basis of, moral and nonmoral judgments.) On this understanding, to use oneself or to allow oneself to be used as a mere means to an end is to agree to behavior to which one, as an agent, cannot rationally agree. The mere is important, because we all use people as a means to our ends; by letting them do us any service – cook us a meal, for instance. The question is whether that is all we’re we’re treating tre ating them as. I should also reiterate those final three words, emphasizing the second: cannot rationally agree. Whether one is using oneself or allowing oneself to be used as a mere means to an end turns on whether one can rationally agree to the use to which one is being be ing put. If not, th en one is thereby the reby instrumeninstrume ntalizing oneself. For example, suppose someone sincerely desires that others always, invariably tell her the truth. In doing so, she cannot rationally agree to behavior that preve that prevents others from telling nts others her the truth. For were she to agree to that, then she would be desiring contradictory things which, in virtually any sense of the word, is not rational. So were she to agree to behavior that prevents others from telling her the truth, then she would be allowing something that contradicts one of her own most fundamental ends; so she would be allowing herself to be used as a mere means to an end, and thus instrumentalizing herself by denying her own nature as a rational agent. Given this understanding of instrumentalizing oneself, the first instrumentalization argument against prostitution may be understood as claiming that by engaging in sexual activity with someone for payment, the prostitute agrees to behavior to which she, sh e, as an agent, a gent, cannot rationa r ationally lly agr ee. Whether Whe ther this th is version of the instrumentalizat ins trumentalization ion argument is soun d turns on whether this claim is true. So is it? Not at first glance. After all, in agreeing to engage in sexual activity with someone for payment, the prostitute is not, at the same time and in the same respect, also not agreeing to engage in sexual activity with someone for payment, which would be a contradiction and hence irrational. But perhaps the prostitute necessarily desires something else that engaging in sexual activity with someone for payment pre vents, which would also be irrational. If so, then this version of the instrumentalization argument could be sound. A number numbe r of potentia pot entially lly necessar ne cessarily ily desirabl des irablee things thin gs could coul d be proposed here, but for the sake of space let’s consider just one, which might however be thought fundamental to the issue at hand. It might be that the prostitute necessarily desires that her agency be respected . It’s possible that engaging in sexual activity with someone for payment prevents respect for one’s
Stop Violence Against Women, Women, Farshaad Razmjouie, 2017
agency. With that in mind, two more questions arise: Does a prostitute necessarily desire that her agency be respected? And, if she does, does prostitution deny respect for her agency? Addressing Addressin g the first question would wo uld involve involv e a complex discussion of the nature of agency; so for the sake of argument, let’s just assume that a prostitute does necessarily does necessarily desire that her agency be respected. This brings us to the second question: Does engaging in prostitution prevent respect for one’s agency? Not necessarily. An effective way of demonstrating this is in steps: the first step being determining whether in general engaging in an activity with someone for payment prevents respect for one’s agency; and the second step being that of acti vity determining whether engaging particularily in sexua in sexua l activity for payment prevents respect for one’s agency. Arguably, engaging in an activity with someone for payment does not in general prevent respect for one’s agency. On the contrary, engaging in an activity with someone for payment, instead of, say, for free or because one is coerced, seems partly to arise out of one’s own respect for one’s agency. The purrespect upon one’s agency. chasing of one’s services also confers respect upon When, When , say, say , a p rofession rofes sional al musici mu sician an requir r equires es that t hat she s he will w ill be paid for her work, she does so in part out of respect her own agency. Indeed, a requirement to be paid would be bewildering (to say the least) if it were not rooted in any way in respect
Perception
for her agency! And by paying the musician for her work, her employer accepts her chosen conditions of cooperation and thereby respects her agency. Engaging in an activity with or for someone for payment, then, does not appear to prevent respect for one’s agency in principle. As for wheth w hether er eng aging specifical speci fically ly in sexua in sexua l activity with activ ity with someone for payment prevents respect for one’s agency, once again, arguably it does not. To begin with, given that in general, engaging in an activity with someone for payment does not prevent respect for one’s agency then neither does engagif all else is ing in sexual activity with someone for payment if all equal. But it might be argued that all else is not in fact equal. But why think this? What is it about sexual activity that precludes the prostitute from preserving respect for her agency when she engaging in it with someone for payment? One argument here starts with the claim that when the prostitute engages in sexual activity with someone for payment she (temporarily) sells (temporarily) sells her body, body , and ends with the claim that she thereby treats herself as if she were an object rather rath er than an agent. Although there’s a lot more to this argument than meets the eye, let’s keep things simple and ask, is it true that when someone engages in prostitution, she temporarily sells her body? To determin dete rminee whether whet her it is, let’s let’ s first consider consi der what selling sell ing other than one’s body usually involves. things other than Ordinarily, when someone sells something – say, a bicycle December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now 15
Prejudice & – she requires payment in exchange for the transfer of ownership of the bicycle from herself to the purchaser. Perhaps what the selling of the prostitute’s body involves, then, is the (temporary) transfer of ownership of her body. I’m confident you will agree a gree that this t his is scarce s carcely ly credible cre dible.. As countles coun tlesss philosophilo sophers have argued, people, and with them their bodies, do not seem to be the sorts of beings that can be sold or owned, morally speaking at any rate. Whatever else the use of the prostitute’s prostitute’s body for prostitution might involve, then, the transfer of ownership of her body is not a part of it, ostensibly. To be sure, if he owns the client might end up treating the prostitute as if he her body. But that he might do so is no indication of, nor does it accord him, actual ownership of the prostitute’s body. Perhaps, then, what the selling of the prostitute’s body involves is not the temporary transfer of ownership of her body, but the temporary transfer of command over her body. This transfer tran sfer of o f comm and might mi ght be b e limited lim ited or unl imited. imit ed. Beginning with the latter, instead of arguing the issue let’s cut to the chase and suppose that the transfer of unlimited command over the prostitute’s body does prevent respect for her agency. However, this does not commit us to holding that prostitution prevents respect for a prostitute’s agency, since prostitution (usually) does not involve the transfer of unlimited command over the prostitute’s body. For instance, it is standard practice for a prostitute to forbid her client from engaging in certain acts – for example, condom-free intercourse – and to require the client to agree to terminate sexual activity at her discretion (Women ( Women Working , Eileen McLeod, 1982, pp.38-42). Of course, as before, the client might end up treating the prostitute prostitute as if he has unlimited command over her body. But once again, that he might do so is no indication of, nor does it accord him, actual unlimited command over the prostitute’s body. So does limited command over the prostitute’s body prevent respect for her agency? Seemingly not. Firstly, limited commands are limited . Accordingly, the client can, and often does, respect the prostitute’s agency by regulating his command over the prostitute’s body in accordance with the limits put forward by the prostitute herself. Failing to do so would be assault. More over, over , requestin requ esting g that somebody some body perform perfo rm certain cert ain actions or services in return for payment does not in itself pre vent respect respect for the seller’s agency, if we disregard for a moment the nature of those actions. If it did then, implausibly, virtually every kind of service would prevent respect for the seller’s agency. Beauticians, accountants, decorators, surgeons, none could sell their services without preventing respect for their agency. But that is very hard to believe. Much more m ore could co uld be said s aid about abo ut this thi s version vers ion of the t he instruins trumentalization argument: for instance, might engaging in sexual activity with someone for payment be immoral even if one can rationally agree to do so? But this will have to suffice. Prostitution As Self-Disintegr Self-Disintegration ation Let’s turn now to the second version of the instrumentalization argument, which relies upon understanding ‘instrumentalizing oneself’ as being to block, damage, or destroy (hereafter, simply to ‘block’) one’s self-integration. This version vers ion of the instrumen instr umentali talizati zation on argument argu ment is 16 Philosophy Now Now December 2017/January 2018
advanced by some ‘new natural lawyers’ (these are ethicists who believe in ‘new natural law theory’ rather than practitioners of the law). These philosophers contend that by engaging in sexual activity with someone for payment, the prostitute reduces her bodily self to the level of an instrument for her conscious self, and thereby blocks her self-integration (what this blocking might involve will be addressed shortly). To provid pr ovidee empiri em pirical cal suppor t for the contentio conte ntion n that tha t the th e prostitute reduces her bodily self to the level of an instrument, consider the following description of prostitution provided by former prostitute and retired philosophy professor, Yolanda Estes. Writing of sexual activity between a prostitute and her client, Estes remarks: “[The prostitute’s] yielding to any sensations that might arise in their sexual activity, responding either with frank displeasure or with genuine arousal arousal to what is happening in and to her body, jeopjeopardizes the integrity of her relationship with the client, others, and herself. To avoid this danger … she must detach herself from the bodily events without, for all that, losing control over her body.” Sex , ed. Alan Soble and Nicolas Power, 2008, p.357) (The Philosophy of Sex,
In other words, the prostitute renders her own body an instrument separate separate from her inner self in order to preserve the necessarily limited, tightly defined nature of her relationship with her client as well as to protect herself. But is it true that she thereby blocks her self-integration? And even if she does, is prostitution thereby immoral? In order to answer the first question, clearly we need to know what self-inte sel f-integrati gration on involves. invol ves. Consider Con sider the th e following follow ing examexa mple of a self-integrated act provided by new natural lawyers Robert George and Christopher Tollefsen (written, allow me to stipulate, from George’s perspective): “When I wish to eat an apple, I reach out and take it; I then take a bite. Thus, I see, reach for, touch, and taste the apple. In all these actions, consciousness consciousness – mind – and body are fully integrated. My seeing is not like the inner presentation of a picture. My reaching out does not consist of an inner attempt, and then an external reach. Nor do touch and taste consist of an external sensation and then an internal one. Internal and external are integrated in all these happenings.” Embryo: A Defense Defense of Human Life, Life, 2008, p.71) ( Embryo:
Accor ding to Georg G eorge, e, then, t hen, his eating eati ng this t his apple involves invo lves his desiring (conscious component) to eat (bodily component) an apple, which gives rise to his eating (bodily component) and tasting (conscious component) an apple, thereby fulfilling his desire (conscious component) to do so. In this his conscious and bodily components are fully integrated because they function as an interrelated, harmonious whole: in short, they function as one. Now consider, instead of the eating of an apple, the actions that a prostitute performs during sex with a client. E ach consists, surely, of a conscious desire to act (conscious component), followed by the physical action itself (bodily component), followed by experiencing (conscious component) and so on. Ag ain, the conscious and the physical components of the act are inter-
Perception
twined and integrated into a seamless whole. Naturally you might object that, appearances aside, the prostitute does not , in fact, desire to perform those actions at all; she does so only because she desires the payment that comes from doing it. But George and Tollefsen’s example of a selfof or the reason integrated act says nothing about the stren gth of or for George’s for George’s desire to eat an apple. Nor should it, I submit, as neither aspect seems to bear upon whether an act blocks one’s self-integration. Regarding the strength of George’s desire to eat an apple, let’s take the worst-case scenario: that, contrary to the narrative; it’s not just that George has no desire to eat an apple, not to eat an apple. Does George block George strongly desires not to his self-integration if he goes ahead and eats one anyway? Not necessarily. If, for example, George desires something that eating an apple provides, such as nourishment, and he eats an apple in order to fulfil that desire, then it seems his doing so does not block his self-integration, despite the fact that he strongly desires not to eat an apple, as it were for its own sake. After all, his h is bodi ly activity act ivity (eating (eati ng an apple) a pple) is a respons re sponsee to his conscious state (the desire for nourishment), performed for the purpose of fulfilling that conscious state and producing other bodily and conscious states (to be nourished and to experience the effects of being so). Indeed, if his eating an apple did block his self-integration, then many under such conditions did block other everyday activities would suddenly turn out to be problematic for the same reason. For example, many people exercise because they desire something that doing so provides – namely, physical health – despite the fact that they otherwise strongly desire not to not to exercise. But the idea that exercising under these conditions blocks one’s self-integration is implausible. As for George’s re ason for eating an ap ple, this, too, seems not to bear upon his self-integration. Whether he does so to acquire nourishment, experience pleasure, or even appease a coercer, his doing so does not appear to block his self-integration. Let’s consider just the most extreme of these, to appease a coercer: a fruitarian extremist with a gun who orders George to eat an apple. George’s bodily activity (eating an apple) is a response to his conscious state (the desire to appease his coercer),
performed for the purpose of fulfilling that conscious state and producing other bodily and conscious states (to appease and to experience the effects of doing so). So even reluctantly eating an apple in order to appease a coercer, then, involves conscious and bodily components that are ostensibly integrated. To be sure, George’s eating of an apple under such conditions is not fully voluntary. But this does not seem to block his self-integration, since an act that is not fully v oluntary is not one and the same as an act that is unfree or disharmonious. And even eve n if i f engag e ngaging ing in sexual sexu al activ a ctivity ity with someone someo ne for payment did block one’s self-integration, it is arguably not thereby immoral. Or rather, if reducing one’s bodily self to the level of an instrument for one’s conscious self and thereby blocking one’s self-integration were immoral, then many activities we previously believed to be morally permissible would (implausibly) be immoral too. Take being on the receiving end of a (non-sexual) massage. Many people do so for the sheer feeling of it, thus reducing their bodily selves to the level of instruments for their conscious selves. Is being on the receiving end of a massage thus immoral? If it is, so much the worse for this version of the instrumentalization argument, I say. Of course, the individual on the receiving end of a massage may not have to combat responding to it with either “genuine arousal” or “frank displeasure” and, in turn, be forced to “detach herself from the bodily events without, for all that, losing control over her body,” as Estes contends the prostitute does. So perhaps it is the specific way in which the prostitute prostitute reduces her bodily self to the level of an instrument that renders prostitution immoral. But this, too, is implausible, because this specific way of instrumentalizing oneself is not unique to prostitution. Consider mind-numbingly boring jobs such as paperfiling, or horribly disgusting jobs such as cleaning portable toilets. If those who perform such work are to avoid responding “with frank displeasure” they must, must, paraphrasing Estes, detach themselves from the bodily events without losing control over her bodies. Yet there nevertheless seems to be nothing immoral about performing either job. And as for responding with genuine arousal, consider that some theater productions contain scenes involving simulated sexual activity. If the actors are to avoid responding with genuine arousal (and they should, as a marvelous scene from the movie Birdman illustrates) they must detach themselves from the bodily events without losing control over their bodies. Again, there seems to be nothing immoral about their doing so. A Modest Conclusion
Much more can be and has h as been said about the instrument in strumentalalization argument for the immorality of prostitution, and there are many other arguments for the immorality of prostitution. I’ll conclude, then, on a modest note: To the extent that opposition to prostitution is rooted in the above versions of the instrumentalization argument for the immorality of prostitution, to that extent we have reasons to be wary of it. © DR R. LOVERING 2017
Rob Lover L overing ing is i s Associa Ass ociate te Pro fessor fess or of Philosop Phil osophy hy at the Colleg Co llegee of Staten Island, City University of New York. His book A book A Moral Mora l Defense of Recreational Drug Use is available from Palgrave Macmillan. December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now
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Prejudice &
An Education In Diversity? ca n be forced on non-liberal non-liberal communities. Christina Easton asks if a liberal education can
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he great liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill (18061873) declared it “almost a self-evident axiom” that all children must be educated. Modern liberals tend to agree that education should be compulsory for minors in some form. However, here the agreement stops and some seemingly intractable problems arise. Education is seen as a means to liberty in later life; but what, for instance, should we say or do when imposing education conflicts with someone’s present liberties? And how can the liberal be consistent in valuing a diversity of views while advocating compulsory education, education, since the moment we state which education must be compulsory, we bring in a controversial vision of ‘the good education’, which may not not be agreed upon upon by all who are forced forced into it? These issues issues came to a head in the famous famous court case of Wis(1972). A number of Amish parents, represented consin v. Yoder by Yoder, objected to the Wisconsin state law that requires school attendance until age sixteen. The Amish did not object to schooling up until fourteen, as this could take place in local Amish schools. schools . But Bu t the th e furthe f urtherr two tw o years ye ars entailed entai led attending atten ding non-Amish High School, exposing the children to an ethos in conflict with Amish values. Instead of High School, Amish teenagers continued their education informally within the community in agricultural work for men and domestic work for women. The Th e court ruled rul ed in favour favo ur of Yoder, a rguing that the Wisconsin Wiscon sin law violated viola ted the parents’ paren ts’ right rig ht to freedom fr eedom of relireli gion by preventing them bringing up their children in the separation and simplicity essential to Amish life. Liberal Differences Of Opinion Many liberals think that the court judgment should have gone the other way. In their view it is justifiable for the state to impose a law requiring that Amish children be exposed to diverse values and ways of living. In On Liberty (1859), Mill extols the value of diversity in contributing to society’s long-term happiness: just as different environmental conditions are re quired for the optimal growth of different plants, so will a variety of ‘experiments of living’ enable different people to be the best that they can be. Modern liberals use a similar idea to argue that it would be wrong to assume that Amish children are all the same, and so they need to encounter a variety of options and decide what best suits their character. A similar opinion was voiced by Justice Douglas, delivering the dissenting opinion in court. He appealed to “the right of students to be maste rs of their own destiny,” and argued that to keep an Amish child from experiencing High School means “the child will be forever barred from entry into the new and amazing world of diversity that we have today.” More recently, the legal philosopher Joel Feinberg has also argued in favour of the Wisconsin law on the basis that the liberal state should be neutral , meaning that it “would act to let all influences, or the largest and most random possible assortment of influences, work equally on the child, to open up all possibilities to him” ( Freedom and Fulfillment Fulfillment , 1992, p.85). 18 Philosophy Now Now December 2017/January 2018
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The trouble with with these views is is that whilst they are liberal in the sense of being open to a variety of views of the good life, in another sense they are deeply illiberal. Although they recognize that there is disagreement in society about which view of the good life to accept, they ignore the fact that there is also disagreement on the more fundamental question of whether we should be valuing autonomy and diversity. So Feinberg justifies a diverse education by appealing to people maximising their chances for self-fulfilment, but he assumes that this requires the exercise of autonomy to pursue diversity. Yet from an Amish perspective, exposure to diversity could lead to moral compromise and even rule out eternal fulfilment in the afterlife, and so would thereby not maximise self-fulfilment. Feinberg’s view is therefore far less neutral than he believes. Indeed, Mill’s vision of nurturing “open, fearless characters” is no doubt anathema anathe ma to Amish parents, who generally value submission and meekness. mee kness. So whilst it may be clear to some liberals that exposure to diversity will benefit Amish children by enriching their available options, this justification justificati on will have little appeal app eal to the Amish Am ish themselves. themse lves. It may even appear to them that forced exposure to diversity amounts to indoctrination into liberal values. Public Agreemen Agreementt The political philosopher John Rawls (1921-20 02) argued that if liberals are really concerned with respecting people in the face of disagreement, then any coercive education policy should be justified with pu blic reasons – reasons re asons which are acceptable ac ceptable to the public as a whole, and which therefore do not refer to controversial views of the good life. He criticised M ill for resting his liberalism “in a large part on ideals and values that are not generally…shared” (‘The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies , 1987, p.6). So can liberals, in the spirit of Rawls, justify exposing children to diversity against the will of their parents parents in a way that appeals appeals only only to public reasons? Firstly, they might say that if citizens are to get along in spite of their disagreements, there needs to be exposure to diversity. In order to see disagreement as reasonable – or at least, to see that those with whom you disagree are not entirely irrational –
Perception you need to engag e with those with whom you disagree. di sagree. Such encounters also provide opportunities for the cultivation of mutual respect and solidarity. This appeal to peaceful co-existence could be seen as a ‘public reason’, for peaceful co-existence seems to be something that every reasonable person would want, regardless regardless of their specific views views of the good good life. Secondly, Rawls argued that education should develop one’s ability to “participate in [society’s] institutions”. Being an active citizen in the democratic process requires at least some basic skills of rational deliberation; and one important way that these skills are gained is by engaging thoughtfully with different points of view and people with different values and backgrounds. Given public reasons such as these, perhaps Rawls would argue that the state should override the wishes of Amish parents for their childrens’ educational isolation. That his view could have such implications is indicated when he writes that “The unavoidable consequences of reasonable requirements for children’s education may have to be accepted, often with regret” Political Liberalism Liberalism,, 2005, p.200). ( Political Rawls versus Mill Liberals today often prefer this Rawlsian-type justification, since by appealing to what all reasonable citizens value it is ‘more neutral’ than justifications appealing to autonomy and diversity, and is therefore better able to cope with the disagreement that is a feature of modern democracies. “Hold on!” says the defender of Mill: “When Rawls says that his liberalism ‘requires far less’ for education than Mill’s liberalism, this implies that Mill has a more demanding view of education. Yet this simply doesn’t fit with what Mill said.” In fact, Mill didn’t did n’t have a precise preci se view of what type of education e ducation was necessary. Rather, he wanted the state to “leave to parents to Liberty, obtain the education where and how they pleased” ( On Liberty, education, not the 1859, Ch. V, para 13). He wanted diversity of education, education in diversity suggested by the above justifications. Indeed, he argued that “A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like another” (ibid ( ibid ). ). One might respond by saying that this isn’t what Mill should have said if he is to be consistent. Indeed, some of Mill’s own comments lead us to think that his minimum education requirements would not be fulfilled by the Amish education in agricultural, carpentry and home-making skills, since he says that children should be taught the knowledge required to draw conclusions on matters of controversy, and even suggests that such
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knowledge be monitored by public examinations. Elsewhere, Mill talks about the t he need ne ed for a meaningful mea ningful right of exit ex it from Mormon communities comm unities – which whi ch might lead l ead us to think thin k that he would want Amish children to have an similarily similarily informed awareness of alternatives. This might perhaps be fulfilled by the Rum springa, springa , a practice in many Amish communities whereby older teenagers are allowed to leave temporarily to experience alternative ways of life before making a decision about their future. Whatever the verdict on Mill, we can still press the point against Rawls by arguing that the public reason defence for imposing liberal education can hardly be called ‘neutral’. For the public reason defence to work, exposure to diversity must be generally viewed as more important importa nt than values that necessitate nec essitate a life of separation. Yet this is precisely what the Amish want to resist. They may may accept accept the the public public reasons, reasons, but believe believe these to to be out weighed by their religious religious reasons. So justifying the Wisconsin Wisconsin state law by appeal to public reasons might be neutral in avoiding relying on controversial views, but it fails to be fully be fully neutral, since it requires rejecting some important Amish beliefs. Changing The Culture Whatever view we tak e, reflecting on this case helps h elps us realise that liberals need to be more cautious in making claims to neutrality, and more honest about where they fail in this aspiration. We must also make sure that our our arguments attend to the reality of the situation. Both the Millian and Rawlsian arguments invoked the importance of diversity, yet the modern High School is not simply a melting pot of different ways of life and an impartial reflector of all values. Rather – as Chief Justice Burgerpointed out – High Schools tend “to emphasize intellectual and scientific accomplishments, self-distinction, competitiveness, worldly success, and social life.” Moreover, peer pressure, and, particularly amongst teenagers, the need to conform, are likely to promote homogenisation of vie ws. So if liberals are to be able to consistently defend compulsory attendance in state-provided state-provided education, school culture would itself first have to undergo some dramatic changes. Schools would need to both exhibit and actively promote a diverse range of ways of of life, as well as provide provide opportunities opportunities for for majority majority values, values, such as individual self-achievement, to be questioned. The challenge for head teachers and policy-makers is to implement strategies that protect minorities from extraordinary pressure to conform without them having to resort to separation. © CHRISTINA EASTON 2017
Amish shopping trip
Christina Easton is a doctoral researcher in Philosophy at the London School of Economics. Visit personal.lse.ac.uk/davisce2/ or follow her @ChrEaston. December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now 19
What’s So Bad About
Smugness?
Emrys Westacott asks whether it really is a terrible moral failing. Elaine: “I hate smugness. Don’t you hate smugness?” Cabdriver: “Smugness is not a good quality.”
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o goes a popular snippet from Seinfeld . In a 2014 article in The Guardian titled ‘Smug: The most toxic insult of them all?’ Mark Hooper opined that “there can be few more damning labels in modern Britain than ‘smug’.” And CBS journalist Will Rahn declared, in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral victory, that “modern journalism’s great moral and intellectual failing [is] its unbearable smugness.” But what is smugness? What, exactly, do people find objectionable about it? And is it really such a terrible moral failing, worthy of being described described as “unbearable”? “unbearable”? What is Smugness?
The best way to get an initial i nitial handle ha ndle on a concept conce pt like smugness is to bring forward a few concrete examples. Here are four: • Someone on a very high income says, “Yes, I am well compensated, but I like to think I’ve earned it, and that I’m worth it. it . As a general rule, r ule, I think thi nk it’s fair fa ir to assume that t hat pay reflects merit.” • A parent whose children have been admitted to prestigious universities, talking to one whose child is at a less selective college, says, “It’s nice to know that one’s kids will wil l be taught by real experts in the field, and that their classmates will be at their intellectual level.” • A punter who has won $500 at the race track backing a rank outside can’t help smirking at the crestfallen faces of h is friends who all backed the favorite. • A couple regularly preen themselves on their healthy and ecologically responsible eating habits. Smugness is not arrogance. Arrogant people typically display a sense of their own importance and superiority with little subtlety: they strut; they are dogmatic; they are dismissive of others. Smugness shares with arrogance a high degree of selfsatisfaction and a sense of some kind of superiority over others, but it typically manifests itself quietly and indirectly, without brashness. Muhammad Ali, who called himself ‘The Greatest’, was undeniably sure about his own superiority superiori ty as a boxer, and he was called many things – arrogant, loud-mouthed, lippy – but I don’t recall anyone describing him as smug. Nor need smugness involve contempt for others. When Will Rahn sets about describing the “unbearable smugness” of the 20 Philosophy Now Now December 2017/January 2018
liberal media, he does not, in fact, really describe smugness. What he describes, desc ribes, and an d what he finds fi nds objectionabl object ionable, e, isn’t the th e self-satisfaction of liberals who are convinced they are right on issues like climate change, or gay rights. Rather, it’s the contempt they show toward Trump supporters whom they dismiss as racist, sexist, ignorant, and backward. It is possible, of course, to be smug and arrogant, or smug and contemptuous. But it’s a mistake to assume that smugness necessarily entails these attitudes. The successful punter described above is smug, but he needn’t display arrogance or feel contempt for those less fortunate. Why Do People Find Smugness Objectionable?
Self-satisfaction and feeling superior to others in some respect are not in themselves objectionable. In fact, for most of us they are often unavoidable. Presumably Einstein felt pretty pleased with himself hi mself when wh en he learned lea rned that th at observation obser vationss made during dur ing an eclipse in 1919 had vindicated his general theory of relativity. And ordinary mortals typically feel self-satisfied and superior when they win a game of Scrabble, earn a promotion, promot ion, receive an award, or are proved right about some disputed piece of trivia. It would be a stern moralist who would send us to hell for harboring such feelings. Yet ‘smugness’ is clearly a pejorative term. So just what is it about smugness that people find objectionable? This is surprisingly hard to pin down. One might think that smugness is especially unbearable unbearab le when it is unjustified. The proverbial case of the privileged scion born on third base and thinking he’s hit a triple comes to mind. But is it really the lack of warrant that galls us here? Consider the smug crank who smiles sadly at our blindness to the fact that the end of the world is nigh. He, too, is deluded; but we are more likely to return his pity than view him with moral disfa vor. In fact, if we are honest with ourselves, justified smugness may be harder to take than the kind that rests on self-deception and illusion. For in the latter case, we have the consolation, or at least the hope, that history or reality will eventually vindicate us and pop the smugster’s bubble. Smugness is perhaps most objectionable when it is epistemologically mologically justified but morally inappropriate – in less technical language, when it involves an “I was right and you were wrong and now you’re screwed!” screwed!” situation. Trivial Trivial examples of such situations punctuate the interactions of every normal household (“I did tell you that you were too old for that kind of dancing.”) But it becomes distasteful if the misfortune suffered is severe (“I gave up smoking, he didn’t; now he’s got lung cancer and I’m running half-marathons.”) I would say, though, that in such cases it is not so much the smugness that is reprehensible as the lack of that sympathetic concern which ought,
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in a morally healthy individual, to check any inclination to be smug. Smugness, as we have said, involves self-satisfaction and some sense of superiority. This may well be accompanied by, and can certainly foster, other failings: most obviously, a lack of humility, and an unwillingness to be self-critical. Here we approach familiar moral ground. Thomas Aquinas argued that pride is the original sin, the worst sin, and the source of all other sins, and numerous theologians have taken the same line. Yet smugness, while it is at odds with humility, surely falls far short of overweening pride. (And we might observe, in passing, that it is hard to imagine a form of smugness more extreme than that of those religious believers who are utterly convinced that they number among the blessed while everyone else is damned.) Another reason we might object to smugness is that we just plain don’t like someone else either being or feeling superior to us. This is understandable. It probably has an e volutionary moral argument against smugness; basis. But notice, it isn’t a moral argument it’s just an explanation of a psychological psychological fact. The accompanying moral argument would be that smugness is objectionable because it causes others to feel inferior, and feeling inferior is an unpleasant experience. This is essentially a utilitarian argument (utilitarians assign a negative value to displeasure) and it can perhaps be given some weight – although I suspect most people will actually deny that encountering smugness excites feelings of inferiority in them. One could also argue that the smug individual simply presents us with a displeasing spectacle. I’m inclined to think that this is closest to what most of us find objectionable about smugness. We simply don’t like that self-satisfied smirk, that selfcongratulatory inflection in the voice, that self-assured com-
placency in the body language. Note, though, that this is closer aesthetic objection than to a moral criticism, more like a to an aesthetic objection complaint about the dorkiness and bad connotations of plus fours and tweeds rather than an ethical critique of grouse shooting. Note, further, just how weak all the above objections to smugness are. Even if the smugness is unjustified, is accompanied by a dose of sinful pride, triggers a few feelings of inadequacy, and offends our taste, it still seems to be a vice without teeth, doing no-one any great harm. Indeed, one could go further. What does it say about me that I am displeased, even angered, by the mere spectacle of someone enjoying the relatively harmless pleasure known as smugness? Wouldn’t I be a better person if this didn’t upset me, just as I’d be more admirable and happier if I was free free from envy? Better, Better, surely, surely, to be the kind of person who takes pleasure in the happiness of others so long as it does not come at another’s expense. Is Smugness Really So Bad? These reflections refle ctions lead natural n aturally ly to the t he question: que stion: Is smugness smug ness ever really so awful as to be ‘unbearable’ (the adjective to which it is commonly yoked)? After all, it doesn’t usually do those who encounter it any actual harm. Nor are smug people prevented by their smugness from achieving happiness. On the contrary, happiness surely requires a certain degree of self-satisfaction. A Woody Allen type, whose only regret in life is that he isn’t somebody else, will always be discontented. Imagine this. At your beautiful daughter’s first birthday party there are many guests, including twelve good fairies who arrive bearing wonderful gifts. Suddenly a thirteenth fairy shows up, angry that she was not invited, and curses your daughter. “She may be beautiful,” she cries, “but when she is fifteen she will prick her finger on a spindle and become thoroughly evil!” You are horrified. For one’s child to turn out evil is the worst fate imaginable, worse even than their death. But the twelfth fairy, who has not yet ye t bestowed besto wed her he r gift, gift , steps step s forwar d and says, sa ys, “I cannot negate the curse entirely, but I can modify it. Your daughter will not become evil; but she will acquire one moral failing that she will have her whole life long. You must choose which it is to be from the t he followin fol lowing g list: list : crue lty, callous c allousness, ness, dishonesty, insincerity, cowardice, ungenerosity, unkindness, bigotry, greed, avarice, sloth, lecherousness, gluttony, or smugness.” Who wouldn’t w ouldn’t choose smugness smugne ss as the least toxic and the t he most bearable of all these evils? I am not defending smugness. It may be a minor failing, but it is, admittedly, often an undesirable trait. We should distinguish, though between actions and feelings. We can work at not exhibiting smugness in our words and deeds; it is much harder to avoid feeling avoid feeling smug smug in some situations, just as it can be hard not to feel envy or jealousy. Still, over time even our feelings can to some extent be trained. And those of us who do succeed in avoiding smugness are surely entitled to feel quite pleased with ourselves. © EMRYS WESTACOTT 2017
Emrys Westacott is Professor of Philosophy Philosophy at Alfred Alfred University in Western New York. His most recent book is The is The Wisdom of of Frugality (Princeton gality (Princeton University Press, 2016). December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now 21
The Rise of the Intelligent Authors Lochlan Bloom wonders what writers will do when computers become better writers than humans.
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ver the th e past century c entury the pursuit pur suit of facts fa cts has come to be the central goal of human progresss, with the dominant perception being that facts are important while fiction fictio n is at best superfluous. superf luous. Yet there is increasing evidence that we as humans live our lives in a realm of fictions. It seems we are preconditioned to accept stories and embed them in the deepest fabric of our societies – for example, stories of nationhood, society, economics, or religion. And yet the ability abilit y to dete rmine facts is now normally nor mally se en as the th e more vital human trait: facts are important, fiction is superfluous. Reading a book or watching a film of an evening is something to do to relax after a hard day of productivity, a hard day discerning the facts in whatever area of work you are engaged. But as the philosopher-historian Yuval Noah Harari claims in an interview, “We cooperate with millions of strangers if and only if we all believe in the same fictional stories. The human superpower is really based on fiction. As far we know we are the only animal that can create and believe in fictional stories. And all large scale human cooperation cooper ation is based on fiction” ficti on” (youtube.com/watch?v=JJ1yS9JIJKs). Here I want to argue that the coming rise of artificial intelligence presents a threat to our way of life not only because it is very likely we will become much worse than machines at determining facts, but also because we will, in all likelihood, become worse than machines at creating fictions. Recommendations for the Useless Machine learning learnin g algorithms connecte d to global networks of sensors and data sources will increasingly outperform us when it comes to assessing what is factually correct, whether that relates to stock market movements, the best way to run a company, or the emotional state of a person. At present it takes professionals years of training to identify facts facts within within their profession, profession, and to understand what is a real issue and what is not. So if in the future nobody is trained because machines can analyse the information better than any human, how then could anyone sensibly discuss what is fact and what not?In not?In relation relation to this this Yuval Noah Harari Harari talks about the rise of a ‘useless class’ incapable of doing anything better than machines; and although there is no certainty how technology will play out, it seems undeniable that in future a huge majority of people, from radiographers to economists, will not not be needed needed to do the sort of fact-based fact-based jobs jobs we do today. today. This shift is also likely to be radical when it comes to the most commonly accepted form of fiction, the novel. Already we are are approaching approaching a state state where where a machine’s understanding of what we read is beyond that of the author in many areas. Amazon can already collect data from milli ons of Kindles and analyse how a particular reader interacts with a text in terms of which bits we read quickly and where we slow down or stop, and extrapolate this data to provide recommendations based on our personality. Now December 2017/January 2018 22 Philosophy Now
This analysis analysi s of the interaction intera ction between betwe en a reader and a nd a text will only on ly get more finesse f inessed d as we a dd more readers reade rs and more m ore computing power into the system. As Harari writes in a Financial Times article, “Soon, books will read you while you are reading them. And whereas you quickly forget most of what you read, computer programs need never forget” (August 26th, 2016). Soon the algorithms will know exactly which tracts push your buttons b uttons.. They The y will wil l know kno w what you enjoy e njoy readin r eading g better be tter than you do. Whether you want a thrilling yarn about swords and sorcery, or a enlightening philosophical novel, developed AI will understand precisely which stories stories you will react to, and will be able able to tailor recommendations recommendations to you personally. personally. The Next Step for Authorship If we take this thought even further, we can see it is not unlikely that once these machine learning tools become available we will then set about re-engineering them so that the machines become the authors themselves. The algorithms may not ‘understand’ what they are writing, but they will be able to calcu late exactly what to write to engage our interest, and will construct construct personalised novels accordingly. In November 2016 Google announced upgrades to its Translate service which bring it closer than ever to the way humans use language – analyzing text at the phrase level rather than word by word. As Barak Turovsky, product lead at Google Translate, wrote in a blog post, “Neural translation translation is a lot better than than our previous technology, because we translate whole sentences at a time, instead of pieces of a sentence… This makes for translations that are usually more accurate and sound closer to the way people speak the language.” Once this approach is refined and improved it is certainly not implausible that a machine would be able to produce a whole book. What’s more, a machine could write a book virtually instanin stantaneously. It could write a hundred books. Millions. One for every customer on demand. An endless series of sequels tailored just for you. A made-to-measure novel for your individual personality right now; your ideal read for your mood at the time. In these circumstances it would be impossible for any human author to compete commercially. What author could possibly make a living? How would a human author produce a best-seller, when a machine can produce a million mil lion perfectly design ed personalised novels in a fraction of the time? T he algorithm will know what you have already read, what you yearn for, what will appear new and fresh to you, and what will appear stale. Who would even e ven bother bo ther readin r eading g the less persona p ersonalised lised work? Well, W ell, there may be a sub-culture that enjoys artisanal books, handcrafted by a human author; but ultimately those books will just not be as enjoyable to read. What then would be the purpose of writing writin g fiction fi ction in a world where machines machi nes can do it so much m uch better? Will that bring an end to the human desire to create fiction through the act of writing?
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An Axe for the Frozen Sea Within
“The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library... Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.” Jorge Luis Luis Borges, Borges, Poetry (1977)
One possibility is that we will utilize the tools provided by AI to forge a new form of of writing. After all, the writing writing process is not about becoming better at typing, or copy-editing, or learning a series of plot rules or character development concepts. It is (or should be) about precisely those things that machines are now improving at – pushing our emotional buttons. The question is not whether the machines will become better than humans at eliciting a given response, which we assume they will, but which responses we choose the machines to elicit; and so I suggest that the job of the author in the AI age will be determining the best sets of responses to aim to create. create . For some the novels they choose will be potboilers, containing formulaic, unchallenging thrills; but for others – those seeking an epiphany or a deeper consciousness of the world – the tools to create machine written fiction will be a core part of literature and their exploration of consciousness.
head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would would be happy happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.” Franz Kafka, Letter to Oskar Pollak, 27th January 1904
The technology will soon soon have the power to enable the more adventurous readers to craft their own path through a constantly evolving literature. With the aid of computer tools, people could even write their own sacred texts, their own books of awakenings. Imagine if every book you read gave you a moment of awakening – provided the axe to the frozen sea inside – instead of spending hours ploughing through books that you realize too late are a waste of time. This can happen if our reading habits themselves became part of the act of creation – an organic never-ending exploration of the possibility of language. © LOCHLAN BLOOM 2017
“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the
Lochlan Bloom Bloom is a British novelist, screenwriter screenwriter and short story writer. His debut novel The novel The Wave is out now. December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now
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Santa Claus & the Problem of Evil Jimmy Jimm y Alfon Alfonso so Licon Licon engages in a little Santodicy for Christmas.
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here are many profound philosophical issues involving Santa. For example, we might wonder how we know that Santa doesn’t exist. That is, although it seems obvious that there is no Santa, the reasons usually given for this disbelief are less sound than is often appreciated. In this article I want to explore an argument against Santa that shares a number of features with the problem of evil that has long troubled theologians. This argument against Santa is one way we can know that he doesn’t exist, but without the same vulnerabilities that the usual reasons have.
Bad Arguments Against Santa First let’s survey some of the usual reasons people give for thinking that there is no Santa. Some say that disproving the Santa belief is a simple matter of visiting the North Pole and looking for him. There would be no Santa to be found. However, it could be that Santa’s Sa nta’s workshop is disguised to avoid detection, even by the most sophisticated methods; after all, Santa is supposedly capable of doing all sorts of other extraordinary things. So, even if Santa resided there, he might not be easily detected. Others say that it would be impossible for Santa to deliver gifts to children around the globe within the space of a single night. This is only a difficulty if we think that Santa is an ordinary human. But that can’t be right. Santa cannot be merely reindeer for transportation! human; after all, he relies on flying on flying reindeer for If Santa had extraordinary powers, then he might be able deliver gifts, the world over, in such a short time. We might for example suppose that Santa has the ability to slow down time. Other people might object that clearly, guardians and family members provide the gifts come Christmas time. Unfortunately, Unfortunately, while they’re they’re often responsible responsible for buying the gifts, this is insufficient to prove that all gifts come from them. However, the claim is not that Santa is the only source of gifts at Christmas. Rather, Santa is only supposed to be the source of some of some gifts. So, although we know that there is no Santa, it is less obvihow we know this is so. This situation of not knowing how ous how we you know is quite common. common. For example, example, you might know that that it’s going to rain in the morning, but without having any idea why it’s going to rain. But after reviewing the problem of evil, I’ll argue that a similar problem provides a good reason for how we know there there is no Santa. Santa. The Problem of Evil Philosophers Philosophers right back to Epicurus (341-270 BC) have grappled with the problem of whether it’s possible to reconcile the existence of widespread and horrendous evil (plagues, torture, genocide...) with the existence of an all-powerful, perfectly benevolent God. Atheists hold hold that needless needless suffering suffering is good reason to doubt that there is an all-powerful, perfectly good God. But theists have a number of responses to the problem of evil. Some argue 24 Philosophy Now Now December 2017/January 2018
that suffering is the product of people exercising their free will; after all, if humans have the ability to choose between good and evil actions, then some of them will choose to do evil. And because the ability to choose, even if the choice is evil, is supremely valuable, God must not interfere; if He did, then it would undermine the value of freely making good choices. For example, we think that people who are compelled to do the right thing are not morally praiseworthy; they are only praiseworthy if they could have chosen to do evil, but chose the good instead. The main thrust th rust of the prob lem involves invol ves there being b eing many instances of suffering that don’t seem to do a bit of good for anyone. The philosopher William Rowe famously gave this example: “Suppose that in a forest somewhere, there is a fawn that has been struck by lightning. She lies on the forest floor for a couple of days in agony, until death relieves her suffering” (‘The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism’, American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (4), 1979). If there is a pe rfectly good God, then it would be in His nature to prevent needless suffering; and if He is all-powerful, then He would be able to prevent it. So why doesn’t He? The problem proble m of evil is only on ly a mystery myster y if there really is such a person as God . The problem we explore in the next section has a similar structure: it is only a mystery why there are vast numbers of good children who receive no gifts whatsoever if there really is such a person as Santa. Santa. Santa and the Problem of Moral Desert We should should start with the essential nature of Santa; that is, the properties that an individual must have if they are to qualify as Santa. One plausible essential property of Santa is that he distributes gifts on the basis of moral desert. When philosophers use the term ‘moral desert’, they mean what people deserve based on their actions. For example, it is plausible that someone who robs a bank deserves to be punished: there is a sense in which they’ve earned their punishment . So it is also plausible to suppose that an essential property of Santa is that he rewards good children with gifts, but doesn’t so reward naughty children. There’s some evidence for this suggestion in popular culture, for example, in the lyrics from the song ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’: “He sees you when you’re sleeping; he knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.”
So Santa is essentially someone who delivers gifts to children them . Thus we should expect that based on whether they deserve them. the distribution of gifts come Christmas morning would respect the moral desert of the recipient if recipient if there were a Santa. Suppose then that only bad children bad children received gifts. This unfair pattern of gift distribution would then itself be good reason to suppose that there was no Santa. However, there’s a catch. If you recall, I said that part of our conception of Santa is that he’s responsible only for some of the
gifts that children receive. Children on the naughty list don’t receive gifts from him; and yet many of them receive gifts anyway. So, with respect to the distribution of gifts among children, there is a confounding factor: parents who give their give their children gifts even if they are naughty. To correct for this factor, we have to focus on on whether there are good children who don’t receive any gifts whatsoever . That is, we would would predict predict that if Santa Santa exists, exists, then good children children would would at least receive gifts from him . But instead we find that there are millions of good children around the world who receive nothing. We might formulate formulate the argument argument as follows: follows: A. If there is a Santa, then all deserving children would receive something for Christmas. B. But there are plenty of deserving children who who receive nothing for Christmas. So, C. There is no such person as Santa. So the pattern of distribution of gifts among good children is a serious evidential challenge to Santa’s existential status. Problems with the Problem
Someone might respond that around the holiday season it is common to find in a shopping mall a Santa asking children what they want for Christmas, without regard for whether they have been bad or good. This could imply that delivering gifts to children because they’re children might instead be central to our conception of Santa. If so, this would be a difficulty for the argument against Santa from moral desert. If part of our conception of Santa is that he delivers gifts indiscriminately, then the fact that Santa doesn’t appear to be responsive to moral desert does not count against the existence of Santa. However, another feature of our shared conception of Santa is that, just as in the mall case, he indiscriminately inquires of every child what they want for Christmas. Santa is fair to every child that he meets, in that he gives them each a chance to feel that they’ve been heard, and perhaps it is also an opportunity to remind them that they should be good if they are to expect any gifts from him. But notice that asking children what they want, and actually delivering delivering it, are very very different. Perhaps someone else might object that there’s so much about Santa that we don’t understand, and he might have compelling reasons for not delivering gifts to some good children. That is, although he usually delivers gifts to good children, there are other mitigating reasons that might override him doing so; however, because Santa is so mysterious, we would be unable to comprehend those reasons (some theists say similar things about God in response to the problem of evil). There are a couple couple of problems problems with this objection. objection. First, while aspects of our modern conception of Santa allow that he is mysterious and magical, this doesn’t seem relevant to evaluating the problem of moral desert. That problem is comprised comprised of two components:
such a prediction is false. The appeal to mystery and magic, even if correct, shouldn’t do much to shake our confidence in either (1) or (2). Second, if the appeal to mystery and magic were compelling enough to overcome our evidence for (1) and (2), then it would also be compelling enough to defeat nearly any claim we could make about Santa. That is, if he is so mysterious that his reasons are beyond comprehension, then nearly all Santa-talk would be unfounded: in other words, if we don’t understand Santa’s moti vations at all, then it’s difficult difficult to say anything about him without the possibility that it be contradicted by something we don’t know. But we seem to say all kinds of things about Santa. So there isn’t much reason to take this kind of objection seriously. In conclusion, although there are a number of reasons people give for how they know there is no Santa, many of these reasons are not as convincing as they first appear. However, if we put the issue in terms similar to the problem of evil, then there is a more fruitful way to think about how we can know that there is no Santa. Hopefully, this exercise is also a reminder that issues which we think are are mundane or obvious, obvious, are often less so upon closer examination. © JIMMY ALFONSO LICON 2017
Jimmy Jimmy Alfonso Alfonso Licon Licon isis a philosop philosophy hy doctoral doctoral student student at the Univer Univer- sity of Marylan Maryland, d, College College Park. He works works primar primarily ily in epistemolog epistemology, y, metaethics, and Santology. (my brother) brother) for for helpful helpful feedback feedback on • Thanks to Glen Licon (my an earlier draft.
(1) The prediction ma ke if Santa San ta were real as to t o the predicti on we would make pattern of Christmas gift distribution among good children based on Santa’s desert-respecting desert-respecting nature. (2) The empirical evidence from our everyday experience that December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now
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Kant & Kant & The Human Subject
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compares the ways Kant’s question “What is the human being?” has been answered by philosophers and anthropologists. anthropologists. Brian Morris
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ccording to many recent texts, anthropology is the study of ‘what it means to be human’. This was Immanuel Kant’s definition of anthropology, and Kant (1724-1804) was one of the founding ancestors of the discipline, along with Rousseau, Herder, and Ferguson. Drawing on the insights of both the Enlightenment and romanticism, anthropology has since its birth had a ‘dual heritage’ (Maurice Bloch) combining humanism and naturalism. In terms of method, it combines scientific explanations of social and cultural phenomena with hermeneutics or biosemiotics. Yet although certain people write of some great divide or schism within anthropol anthropology, ogy, it has always always had, had, in spite spite of its diversity, diversity, a certain unity of vision and purpose. It employs a universal perspective that places humans firmly within nature. Anthropology has therefore always placed itself at the interface between the humanities and the natural sciences, especially e specially evolutionary biology. In many ways it is an inter-discipline, held together by placing an emphasis on ethnographic studies, which involve a close experiential encounter with a particular way of life or culture. Both Karl Popper and Mario Bunge described anthropology as the key social science, for it is unique among the human sciences in putting an emphasis on cultural differences (Herder). This means it can offer a cultural critique of much of Western culture and philosophy, while at the same time emphasizing our shared humanity (Kant), thus enlarging our sense of moral community. Kant suggested that the most important question in philosophy was not that of truth (epistemology), goodness (ethics), or beauty (aesthetics) – the topics which so fascinate academic philosophers – but rather the anthropological question, ‘What is the human being?’ He also suggested that this question could empirically , and not by resorting to, say, metaonly be answered empirically, physics. This implies, of course, that we can learn more about 26
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the human subject by studying anthropology, (ethnography), sociology, psychology, ethology, and now evolutionary biology, than by engaging in speculative academic philosophy about human beingness, in the style of Husserl, Heidegger, or Derrida. Throughout Throug hout history, histor y, and in all cultures, cultur es, people have responded to Kant’s fundamental question ‘What is the human being?’ in very diverse ways; even denying that humans have any relation with the material world, as e xtreme gnostics do. Or Hare Krishna devotees exclaim, ‘You are not your body’. Indeed, there has been a long tradition in Western philosophy that identifies the subject/self with consciousness . Anthropologists have long emphasized and illustrated the diversity of cultural conceptions of the human subject (see my Anthropology of the Self , Pluto, 1994); but even within the Western intellectual tradition there exists an absolute welter of studies that have attempted to define or conceptualize the human subject in different ways. Western responses to Kant’s fundamental question have been extremely diverse and contrasting, and I want to briefly discuss three approaches: the essentialist, the dualist, and the Kantian triadic ontology of the subject. The Human Essence
The first approach tends to define the human subject or self self in terms of a single essential attribute. The following essentialist characterizations of humanity are well known: Homo known: Homo economicus (‘economic man’), Homo man’), Homo faber (‘the primate’), Homo faber (‘the tool-making primate’), Homo and Homo ludens (‘man sapiens (‘wise sapiens (‘wise man’), and Homo ludens (‘man the player’). Aristotle famously defined humanity as Zoon logon echon – ‘the animal endowed with reason’. (The tendency to group Aristotle together with the likes of Descartes, Kant and Heidegger as an advocate of a dualistic metaphysic is, however, somewhat misplaced, because Aristotle, as Ernst Mayr always insisted, was
fundamentally fundamentally a biological thinker. Aristotle certainly knew a lot more about the diversity of animal life than did the pretentious Jacques Derrida and his cat.) Robert Ardrey, in contrast, defined humanity as the ‘killer ape’; while Julien La Mettrie and Richard Dawkins seem to envisage the human person as simply a biological machine. A more recent controversial account of humans depicts them in rather Hobbesian fashion rapiens (John as a wholly predatory and destructive animal: Homo animal: Homo rapiens (John Gray). Such misanthropy is debatable, and is simply an update of Friedrich Nietzsche’s notion that humans are a ‘pox’ on a beautiful earth. Many twentieth century deep ecologists have expressed the same negative sentiments, that humans are ‘aliens’ or ‘parasites’ on the rest of the biosphere; and thus famines, the AIDS epidemic, and malaria, malari a, were extolled as a way of reducing the human population. Such anti-humanism was long ago critiqued by the social ecologist Murray Bookchin. essential characteristic The list of what is i s deemed to be the th e essential characteristic of the human species seems virtually endless. But significantly, such interpretations based on a single essential characteristic tend to gravitate to two extremes. On the one hand, there are those scholars who firmly believe in the existence of a universal human nature or essence. Generally adopting a highly indi vidual-cent vidual -centered ered approach ap proach,, the human hu man subject subj ect is thus th us defined defi ned either as a purely rational ego (as with rational choice theorists), or as having innate tendencies and dispositions dispositions – as having a universal nature that was forged through natural selection processes during the Palaeolithic, when humans were huntergatherers. Thus humans have a nature, and it is fundamentally tribal, as Robin Fox puts it. On the other hand, many other scholars, particularly cultural anthropologists, existentialists and postmodernists, deny that humans have an essence or nature. Such scholars often suggest that in becoming human beings , through the development of language, symbolic thought, self-consciousness, and complex sociality, we have moved beyond nature to become free of the chains of our instincts. We have become, in Ernst Cassirer’s term, Homo term, Homo symbolicum. symbolicum. Such a conception has often been critiqued (by, for instance, Steven Pinker), as it implies that the human mind is simply a ‘blank slate’ which has completely effaced human biological history and the inherited specific faculties of the human brain, and therefore, mind. Homo Duplex
It has also long been recognized that humans are fundamentally both natural and cultural beings, and that language, selfidentity, and social existence are interconnected, and have been throughout human history. As Kenan Malik emphasized, human nature is as much a product of our historical development as it is of our biological heritage. Emile Durkheim famously expressed this dualistic conception of human subjectivity as Homo as Homo duplex when wrote: duplex when he wrote: “Man is double. There are two beings in him; an individual being which has its foundation in the organism, and a social being which represents the highest reality in the intellectual and moral order” Life , 1915). (The Elementary Forms of Religious Life,
Like his mentor, Auguste Comte, Durkheim allowed little
scope for a science of psychology, let alone any existentialist thought. It has long been recognized, by thinkers as diverse as Edmund Husserl, Erich Fromm, and Lewis Mumford, that there is an essential ‘paradox’ or ‘contradiction’ at the heart of human life. For humans as organisms are an intrinsic part of nature, while at the same time, through our conscious experience, symbolic life, and above all, our culture, we are also in a sense separate from nature. In this light humans have been described by Raymond Tallis as an ‘explicit animal’. We have what Cicero described as a ‘second nature’. This duality or dialectic is well expressed in the famous painting in the Vatican by Raphael, Raphael, The School of Athens , which depicts depic ts Plato P lato pointing pointi ng up to t o the th e heavens while Aristotle points down to the earth. Human duality is also reflected in the fact that the human brain is composed of two distinct hemispheres, with distinct functions, and two very different ways of being in the world. The left hemisphere is associated with language, symbolic thought, analysis, facts or things in isolation, focussed attention, and the nonliving aspects of the world; while the right hemisphere is associated with visual
may develop. This sensibility is manifested in a predilection for abstraction and geometric patterns, a flight from the body, a feeling of fragmentation, a lack of empathy for others (egoism), and alienation from the natural world – the postmodern condition, or the schizophrenic personality lauded by Gilles Deleuze? What tends to be downplayed or even ignored in dualistic conceptions of the human subject is human uniqueness and agency. It might therefore be helpful to return to Kant and his more complex triadic conception adic conception of the human subject.
Plato and Aristotle by Raphael
imagery, pre-linguistic thought, synthesis, patterns and relations, things in context, and organic life. Reason, science, creativity and selfhood all involve both sides of the brain, and there is no simple relationship between the hemispherical differences and ethnic, class or gender affiliations. It is significant however that if the right side of the brain is severely damaged, the left side becomes overactive, and an ultra-rationalist sensibility
Human duality is “ also reflected in the fact that the human brain is composed of two distinct hemispheres, with distinct functions, and different ways of being in the world.
”
A Triadic Triadic Ontology Ontol ogy Through his philosophical phi losophical writings writi ngs and with regard to his profound profound influence influence on subsequent scholarship, Immanuel Kant has rightly been acclaimed as one of the key figures in the history of Western thought. He had a deep interest in the natural sciences, particularly physical geography, but what is less well known is that he also gave lectures in anthropology for more than twenty years. We are told by his student Johann Herder that the lectures were in the nature of hugely entertaining talks. At the age of seventyfour Kant published Anthropolog published Anthropologyy from a
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28 Philosophy Now Now December 2017/January 2018
Pragmatic Pragm atic Point Poi nt of View Vie w (1798). (By ‘pragmatic’, he meant the use of knowledge to widen the scope of human freedom and to advance the dignity of humankind.) In this seminal text Kant suggested that there were three distinct, but interrelated, ways of understanding the human sub ject: firstly as a unive rsal species-being species-bei ng ( mensch) mensch) – the “earthly being endowed with reason” on which Kant’s anthropological work was mainly focussed; focussed; secondly secondly as a unique unique self ( selbst ( selbst ); ); and thirdly as part of a people – as a member of a particular social group (volk (volk). ). (Notwithstanding (Notwithstanding the last element, Herder always insisted that Kant, with his emphasis on universal human faculties such as imagination, perception, memory, feelings, desires and understanding, tended to downplay the importance of language, poetry and cultural diversity in understanding human life. But as a pioneer anthropologist, Herder also emphasized that anthropology, not speculative metaphysics or logic, was the key to understanding humans and their life-world, that is, their culture.) Long ago the anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn, following Kant, made a statement that is in some ways rather banal but which whic h has h as always a lways seemed seem ed to me to encom e ncompass pass an importan impo rtant t truth. Critical of dualistic nature-culture conceptions of the human subject, Kluckhohn, along with the pioneer psychologist Henry Murray, suggested that every person is, as a speciesbeing (a human) in some respects like every other person; but they are also all like no other human being in having a unique personality (or self); and, finally, that they have affinities with s ome other humans in being a social and cultural being (or person). These three categories relate to three levels or processes in which all humans are embedded; namely, the phylo genetic gene tic , pertaining to the evolution of humans as a speciesbeing; the ontogenetic , which relates to the life history of the person within a specific familial and biological setting; and, -historica orical l , which situates the person in a spefinally, the socio the socio-hist cific social-cultural context. So Kluckholm, not unlike Kant, thought human beings need to be conceptualized in terms of three interconnected aspects: as a species-being a species-being characterized characterized by biopsychological dispositions and complex sociality; as a unique person , enacting individual self individual self ; and finally, as a social being or person, social identities or subjectivities – which in all human societies are multiple, shifting and relational. For an anthropologist like Kluckhohn the distinction between being a human individual and being a person a person was was important, importa nt, for many tribal t ribal people peop le recognize non-human persons, while under chattel slavery, the law treated human slaves not as persons, but rather as things or commodities. Conclusion Anthropologists Anthropo logists within wit hin different diffe rent cultural cultu ral configurations config urations tend t end to highlight one of three aspects of human subjectivity. NeoDarwinian scholars, for example – particularly evolutionary psychologists and sociobiologists – invariably focus on the human subject as a species-being. Emphasizing genetic or biological factors, they tend to downplay or ignore existential and social factors in understanding the human subject. In contrast, existentialists, existentialists, radical phenomenologists, phenomenologists, and literary anthropologists, put a fundamental emphasis on the unique self and subjective experience – Derrida’s ‘autobiographical animal’ –
Photography In The 18th Century Kant, that austere, stay-at-home philosopher from back in his eighteenth century enlightenment would really have liked cameras, and not just because they demonstrate how our kit, biological and mechanical, determines if we see the flower petals in his matrix of a world as luminescent symbols of god or grainy sets of washed out flakes. No, it would have shaken him from the slumber of his circumscribed ways, so predicable town clocks were set to his daily walk. Imagine him with a new interest in photography playfully dancing out at any time of day hiding behind some flowering shrub in knee-length hosiery and buckled shoes, digital Canon or Nikon in hand, happily snapping startled passersby; or sneaking up on shopkeepers, shiny goods piled high behind them, detecting and then revealing with candid shots their cheating ways and hidden dodgy fruit, all their secretest secrets, shutter sound loud, flash bright to get the full paparazzi effect. Every month on forays far beyond his home town he’d trade in a lens or two for some higher spec: faster, wider, longer. Once in a while there’d be a brand new body with more pixels to its sensor because, like you and me, he greedily craves the lure of an ever-greater approximation to reality, whatever that may be. But after a while perhaps the Königsberg aldermen would tire of seeing their moles and deformities magnified magnified around town in posters churned out for our moralist by the local apothecary. With not a wisp of understanding the irony that they’d caught him out in some illogical anomaly, they’d arraign him on charges of behaving in ways that treated others as mere images for his own selfish pleasure; and at the end of the lawsuit the judge in exasperation would intone, “Immanuel, where would we be if everyone spent their time in such a useless pursuit?” Then in response to furtive clickings from behind the philosopher’s gown he’d shout with cold command and withering frown “For God’s sake man, put that camera down!” © PETER KEEBLE 2017
Peter is a retired local government research research officer and teacher, much of whose poetry makes use of philosophy. December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now 29
Philosophical Haiku
LAOZI (Pre-Fourth Century BCE) Going with the flow Being at one with nature The way of the Dao
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aozi, often often written Lao Tzu – the name simply simply means ‘Old ‘Old
Master’ – has the distinction amongst amongst great philosophers philosophers of probably never having existed. Still, having an uncertain existence hasn't prevented his being revered by many as a deity
(which is pretty much the case with God). Laozi is reputedly the author of the great text of Daoism, the Dao De Ching or Ching or Tao Te Ching (Treatise on the Way and Its Power ). ). Tradition holds that Laozi lived in the sixth century BCE; but it might’ve been the fifth century… or the fourth (it’s a moot point, really, when you’re talking about someone who possibly didn’t live at all). Whenever it was he did or didn’t live, he was certainly esteemed, and given the title of ‘Supreme Mysterious and Primordial Emperor’, idolised by both nobility and the ordinary riff-raff. Clearly, having an uncertain existence doesn’t prevent his being revered by many as a deity (that’s also pretty much the case with God). All sorts of legends surround the legendary Old Master, including the story that he gave the Buddha a few hints on how to live. Laozi (supposedly) taught that the world consists of opposites – light and dark, hot and cold, male and female – and that the underlying principle of the natural world is reversion: reversion: if things go too far to one extreme, they’ll swing back the other in due course, like a pendulum (possibly flattening you along the way past). The best way for us to live is to be in accordance with this natural order, that is, in accordance with the Dao, which is the natural flow of the universe, merging ourselves as fully as we can with nature. Time and effort shouldn’t be wasted in pursuing worldly possessions – inevitably these lead only to loss and suffering. Instead Instead we should endeavour to be meek, mild, and have as few desires as possible. For reasons which escape me, this is not a philosophy that appeals
and thus tend to completely ignore the important insights to be derived from evolutionary biology and historical sociology. Finally there is a group of scholars who emphasize to an extreme that the human person is fundamentally a socio-cul soci o-cul-tural being . This kind of approach is exemplified by Durkheimian sociology, American cultural anthropology – well reflected refl ected in the t he writings writin gs of Leslie Lesli e White, who wh o famously suggested that we should study culture as if human beings did not exist – as well as the structuralism of Claude Levi-Strauss and Louis Althusser. It’s a current of thought that interprets human cognition as largely determined by sociocultural factors; or, as with the postmodernists, as simply an effect of discourses. It thus downplays the relevance of biological and ecological factors in human life, with some scholars virtually denying human agency. They have what Dennis Wrong long ago described as an “oversocialized “oversocialized conception of man.” However, each of the three approaches to the human subject – the biological, the psychological, and the sociocultural – have a certain validity, and a fundamental part to play in answering the question ‘What is the human being?’ They are of limited effectiveness, however, if interpreted in an exclusive fashion. What is i s needed need ed is an approa ch that tha t integrat inte grates es all three t hree perspectives, since a host of causal mechanisms and generative processes – biological, ecological, psychological, social and cultural – go into making up a human being. Throughout the t wentieth century, cen tury, many scholars , within diverse intellectual traditions, did develop a more integrated approach to the understanding of the human subject, recognizing, like Kant, the need to develop a more complex model of the subject. The sociologist Marcel Mauss, for example, in dup lex,, conceptualcontrast to Durkheim’s concept of Homo of Homo duplex ized the human subject as l’homme total , conceived as a biological, psychological and social being; a living being with inherent capacities and powers and a unique self constituted through diverse social relationships. Likewise, within the pragmatist tradition, George Herbert Mead and C. Wright Mills emphasized that the human being was simultaneously a biological organism, a self with a fundamentally social psychic structure, and a person embedded within a specific historical context. The Marxist phenomenologists phen omenologists Maurice Maur ice Merleau-Ponty Merleau-P onty and Herbert Marcuse, the Neo-Freudian scholars Erich Fromm and Erik Erikson (who attempted a synthesis between psychoanalysis and, respectively, Marxism or anthropology), and the cultural anthropologists Clyde Kluckhohn, Irving Hallowell and Melford Spiro, have all attempted, in various ways, to convey the complex triadic nature of human subjectivity. The postmodernist mantra that with the developments in biotechnology and computer science (the web) we are ‘humans no more’ – the title of a recent text – is pure reverie [dream], to use a term of that rather neglected French scholar Gaston Bachelard. Rest assured, humans are still around, and anthropology is still a flourishing (inter-)discipline. (inter-)discipline.
much to the current Western mind.
© PROF. PROF. BRIAN MORRIS 2017
© TERENCE GREEN 2017
Brian Morris is emeritus professor of Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. His latest book is An is An Environ Environmental mental History History of Southern Malawi.
Terence is a writer, historian and lecturer, and lives with his wife and their dog in Paekakariki, NZ. hardlysurprised.blogspot.co.n z 30 Philosophy Now Now December 2017/January 2018
Defending Humanistic Reasoning Humanistic Reasoning Paul Giladi, Alexis Papazoglou, & Giuseppina D’Oro say we need to recognise that science and the humanities are asking and answering different questions.
T
he year is 399 BCE. Socrates has just been sentenced to death by his fellow Athenians for allegedly corrupting the youth of Athens. Sitting in his cell, Socrates is asked by his friends to explain why he remains in prison instead of escaping to exile. How should Socrates’ explain it? Should he provide a physical explanation; that is, an account of his bodily movements? Or should he provide a different kind of explanation – one that makes reference not to h is physiology, but to his reasons for acting? Let’s have a look at the following passage from Plato’s Phaedo to see Socrates explain the difference between the two kinds of explanation: “in trying to give the causes of the particular thing I do, I should say first that I am now sitting here because my body is composed of bones and sinews, and the bones are hard and have joints which divide them and the sinews can be contracted and relaxed and so... make me able to bend my limbs now, and that is the cause of my sitting here with my legs bent… [But then I] should fail to mention the real causes, which are, that the Athenians decided that it was best to condemn me, and therefore I have decided that it was best for me to sit here and that it is right for me to stay and undergo whatever penalty they order.” (98c-e)
Or to use another example: Why did Caesar cross the Rubicon? Because of his leg movements? Or because he wanted to assert his authority in Rome over his rivals? When we seek to interpret the actions of Caesar and Socrates, and ask what reasons they had for acting so, we do not usually want their actions to be explained as we might explain the rise of the tides or the motion of the planets; that is, as physical
events dictated by natural laws. Our curiosity is satisfied when, rather than treating them as simply another material entity, the explanation enables us to see the purpose of their action. Pro viding an an account account of their physiology physiology here would would not not adequately adequately make sense of their actions. The two varieties of of explanation appear appear to compete, because both give rival explanations of the same action. But there is a way in which scientific explanations such as bodily movements and humanistic explanations such as motives and goals need not compete. Our aim in this article is to introduce you to a highly neglected tradition in the philosophy of mind, which we’ll call epistemological idealism, idealism , to see how scientific and humanistic explanations can co-exist. This form of idealism is called ‘epistemological’ to highlight that it has nothing to do with metaphysical idealism, the claim that reality is made of ‘mental stuff’. Instead, epistemological epistemological idealism recognises that when it comes to our explanations of reality, the aims and methods we apply reflect something about our minds, rather than simply being about the way the world is independently of us. Scientific Naturalism Naturalisms s Since the late nineteenth century, Western philosophy has adopted increasingly naturalistic views. views. In current Anglo-AmeriAnglo-American philosophy, the norm is to assume a reductive form of this naturalism which claims that everything can be explained just in called physicalism physical terms . This position is usually called physicalis m or materialism. rialism . According to this version of scientific naturalism, the image of the world provided by the physical sciences (basically, physics, chemistry, and biology) is all the world there is. And philosophy must conform to science. To quote Paul Boghossian, “We take science to be the only good way to arrive at reasonable
Caesar Crossing the Rubicon by Granacci. But why?
December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now 31
beliefs about what is true... Hence, we defer to science” ( Fear ( Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism, Constructivism, 2006). In this view, the task of philosophy is first to assume the methodological superiority of natural science, and then to develop positions which do not disagree with or upset certain background assumptions of science. The most important of these background assumptions are that: (1) there exists a theory-independent, external world; (2) the world investigated by physics is a knowable world; and (3) the explanations of physics provide complete explanations of reality. One reason physicalist forms of scientific naturalism have become so widely accepted is that many philosophers tend to find it difficult to make room for complex phenomena such as consciousness within the world presented to us by the natural sciences. Because of this, some physicalist philosophers reduce complex psychological phenomena down to their component material parts – things such neural neural mechanisms – or even to the very component componentss of matter itself. They do do this to easily easily accomaccommodate complex phenomena within the natural world. To quote Thomas Nagel, Na gel, with wi th the reductive physicalists, physicalist s, “there “ther e is the th e hope that everything can be accounted for at the most basic level by the physical sciences, extended to include biology” Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materi alist Neo-Darwinian Neo-Darwinia n Concep( Mind tion Is Almost Certainly False, False, 2012). However, more recently, philosophers such as John McDowell, Jennifer Hornsby, Hilary Putnam and Nagel himself have taken a different approach: a non-reductive scientific naturalism. These philosoph philosophers ers argue argue that while the the mind is indeed indeed part of the world presented to us by the natural sciences, the complex mental states involved in consciousness cannot be simply scaled down to physical processes. To quote Nagel again: “There are doubts about whether the reality of features of our world such as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, purpose, thought, and value can be be accommo accommodated dated in a universe universe consist consisting ing at at the most basic level only of physical facts – facts, however sophisticated, of the kind revealed by the physical sciences.” (ibid ( ibid ). ). Because it is a naturalism, and hence limited to natural phenomena, non-reductive naturalism holds that there is nothing ‘occult’ or ‘spooky’ about consciousness, thoughts, and feelings. fee lings. However, there are (at least) two main concerns with this approach. Firstly, if these phenomena are regarded as natural just because they are not supernatural, what should count as natural and supernatural now? Secondly if we deny that such phenomena as consciousness are exhaustively accounted for by physical science, the problem arises of explaining how they relate to the rest of nature – the nature that is fully described by that science. But wait. There is a way out of this difficulty: we drop the question about how mind and the rest of nature relate, and focus instead on the question of what must be assumed for certain forms of knowledge to be possible. Then once we have uncovered the background assumptions to our forms of knowledge, we can show how how different forms of explanations can co-exist. Investigating Knowledge Itself Investigating This approach has been pre-shadowed pre-shadow ed by certain historical historica l philosophers we three are researching. Explaining the place of mind within nature in this way started with the attempts by Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), Johann Gustav Gustav Droysen Droysen (1808(180832 Philosophy No Now w December 2017/January 2018
1884), and Wilhelm Windelband (1848-1915) to defend the independence of the human sciences from the natural sciences. This approach approach is also found in the the work of British British idealists idealists such such as R.G.Collingwood (1889-1943) and Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990). They started with the claim that all knowledge rests on presuppositions, presuppositions, and defined philosophy as the task of uncovering and making explicit the assumptions assumptions which govern all forms of inquiry, from which they then hoped to show the compatibility of different forms of explanation. It is the task of natural scientists to investigate nature. But it is the task of philosophers to investigate what we must assume to make the scientific investigation of nature possible. possible. Philosophers are not interested in starting with the results of natural science, but with their presuppositions. To quote Wilhelm Windelband here: “It is permissible for the other sciences to regard... general perspectives and principles as given and established. This assumption is sufficiently reliable for the purposes of specialised research within the discipline in question. The essential feature of philosophy, however, is the following: its real object of investigation is actually these [general perspectives and principles] principles] themselves.” History and and Natural Science Science,, p.169, 1894). ( History
Now this is not to say that scientists themselves cannot engage in reflection on the background assumptions of science and the concept of nature. But it is to say that when scientists philosophy, not science. This is because this do so, they are doing philosophy, sort of investigation cannot itself be carried out using the methods of natural science. Therefore, this approach approach is committed committed to two tiers tiers of investigation: a ‘primary tier’ of empirical investigation, which is the work of scientist scientists; s; and a ‘seconda ‘secondary ry tier’, tier’, looking looking into the assumpassumptions behind the empirical investigation, which is the work of philosophers. In this context, the philosopher is whoever engages in reflection on the background assumptions of primary tier enquiries . Under this view, philosophy is a separate discipline whose distinctive subject-matter is the background assumptions of (say) natural scientific inquiry. This is an epistemological idealist phi-
losophy because it recognises that the assumptions made by different forms of inquiry reflect human interests and cognitive capacities. But this approach’s distinctive idealist tinge aims not to compete with natural science in telling us what exists. Rather, it aims to spell out what we must assume for certain forms of knowledge to be possible, and to argue that these assumptions are a reflection of our cognitive interests and capacities. For scientists are interested in prediction. Such an example, physical example, physical scientists are interest is well served by the formulation of inductive generalisations, which rely on the principle that natural laws apply uniformly so that unobserved cases will resemble previously observed cases. Cultural anthropologists , on the other hand, are interested in uncovering the logic behind the apparent randomness or irrationality of human societies and customs. The assumption of the uniformity of nature which serves the physical scientist so well in predicting the course of impersonal nature will therefore be of no use to the cultural anthropologist, whose goal is rather to unlock the hidden logic behind actions which they struggle to comprehend in the light of their own cultural norms. Understanding philosop philosophy hy as being concerned with reflecting on and disclosing what we must assume for certain forms of knowledge to be possible enables one to defend the autonomy of humanistic explanations better than any attempt to defend the distinctiveness of the mental from a naturalistic standpoint. Why? Because by carefully unpacking the background assumptions of the different forms of inquiry we can lay bare the most important difference between the natural sciences and the human sciences. For example, natural science presupposes a uniform universe governed by universal laws; on the other hand, a historian does not approach history in such a way. Another difference between the natural sciences and the human sciences amounts to the natural sciences aspiring to grasp the universal, the general, whereas a human science such as history aspires to make sense of the particular, of unique events. Understood as an inquiry into the presuppositions presuppositions of knowledge rather than as a claim about the nature of reality, epistemological idealism succeeds in showing how it is possible for different and apparently incompatible explanations to peacefully co-exist. For example, the question ‘Why did JFK die?’ would no doubt r eceive v ery different differ ent answers answe rs from a physiphysi cian and from a political historian. The physician might say that JFK died because his cranium was pierced by two bullets which caused fatal damage to his brain; while while the political political historian may argue that JFK’s death was the result of a political conspiracy. These answers do not compete because they do not address the same why-question: the political historian looks for motives, whereas the physician looks for antecedent conditions. Although JFK died only once, his death can be explained in multiple ways which are not incompatible if the explanations provide answers to different kinds of why-questions.The claim that these explanations compete arises only when we fail to see se e that the explanatory e xplanatory goals g oals of the political polit ical historian and those of the physician are not the same. In a similar way, once it is acknowledged that different forms of inquiry rest on different presuppositions and have different explanatory goals, the alleged conflict between the human and the natural sciences is deflated.
This relative rel atively ly forgotten forgo tten philosoph ph ilosophical ical tradition tr adition not only manages to make sense of how different forms of explanation, such as the physical and the psychological, can co-exist. It also has the advantage of offering us a conception of philosophy as a more independent and reflective activity, rather than merely an afterthought to an already fully formed natural scie ntific world picture. picture. Thus a defence of the the independence of humanistic explanations goes hand-in-hand with an understanding of philosophy as being tasked with unearthing the background assumptions assumptions which govern different forms of investigation. Philosophy Is Indispensab Indispensable le Philosophy and the human sciences will never be able to tell us the age of the universe or whether silver dissolves in nitric acid. Because philosophy and the human sciences can’t give us answers to those sorts of questions, physical scientists such as Stephen Hawking have presumed to dismiss philosophy: “Philosophy is dead. Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments Design, 2010). Quite in science. Particularly physics” (The ( The Grand Design, aside from the irony that Hawking’s put-down of philosophy is itself a philosophical argument, not one relying on any particular scientific evidence, we think there is a good reason for scitells entists to think that philosophy is alive and well: philosophy well: philosophy tells us the background assumptions which govern the sciences . In light of the attacks on philosophy by Hawking and others, a reminder of the arguments in defence of the independence of philosophy by Daniel Dennett is both needed and timely: “Scientists sometimes deceive themselves into thinking that philosophical ideas are only, at best, decorations or parasitic commentaries on the hard, objective triumphs of science, and that they themselves are immune to the confusions that philosophers devote their lives to dissolving. But there is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.” Idea,, 1996) (Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
In epistemological idealism, a defence of the human sciences goes hand in hand with an understanding of philosophy as distinct in kind from natural science. Epistemological idealism, then, provides a powerful defence of the autonomy of philosophy against the recent attempts to see it as subordinate to the natural sciences. Reports of the death of philosophy rely on a misunderstanding of its nature. Rather, philosophy itself is needed in order to make sense of the human, as well as the natural, sciences. © DR PAUL GILADI, DR ALEXIS PAPAZOGLOU PAPAZOGLOU & DR GIUSEPPINA D’ORO 2017
Paul Giladi is a teaching and research fellow in Philosophy at University College Dublin and honorary research fellow at the University of Sheffield. Alexis Papazoglou is Lecturer in Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London, and secretary of the Hegel Society of Great Britain. Giuseppina D’Oro is Reader in Philosophy at Keele University and principal investigator, with Paul and Alexis, on a Templeton-funded project ‘Idealism and the Philosophy of Mind’. • This This artic article le was made made poss possibl iblee throu through gh the suppor supportt of of a grant grant from from the John John Temple Templeton ton Foundati Foundation. on. The opinio opinions ns express expressed ed in in it are those those of of the the autho authors rs and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation.
December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now 33
Seeing the Future in the Present Past decay. Siobhan Lyons perceives the flow of history in terms of organic growth and decay. “This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.” Gertrude Stein
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own the end of the street where I used to live in Melbourne Melbou rne there was an old house that became becam e abandoned. For the longest time the house went through varying stages of decay, with boards put up over the windows, graffiti on the walls, and we eds obscuring the litter left behind by the teenagers who would frequently loiter inside the abandoned structure. Our contemporary obsession with modern ruins, ambiguously dubbed ‘ruin porn’, has a tendency to trivialise the importance of such sites, which appear out of phase with our normal experience of the present. In her book Dispatches from Dystopia: Histories of of Places Not Yet Forgotten (2015), historian Kate Brown talks instead of ‘rustalgia’ (cf ( cf nostalgia). nostalgia). For Brown, while some people speak of their ‘lustful’ attraction to such sites, “others will speak in mournful tones ton es of what is lost, what I call rustalgia” (p.149). Rustalgia both transforms and transports us, underpinning the more philosophical elements of these places, while ‘ruin porn’ makes them into nothing more than objects to gape at. She thinks her term and what it draws attention to will help us understand how “sketchy is the longstanding faith in the necessity of perpetual economic growth.” Focusing On The Future Contemporary ruins such as those found in Detroit or Chernobyl attract thousands of ‘ruin tourists’, many of whom are attempting to engage with the existential threat these sights arouse. Modern ruins become a way of time travelling into the future within the present, giving us insight into what life may be like without us, and inspiring in us a kind of paranoia. Signalling the eventual decay to which we will all succumb, contemporary ruins inspire fascination and fear, a furious denial of our immortality, and a wary flirtation with death. These sights are fascinating to us because they prompt our asking about our place in the overarching narrative of history. Although a fascination fasc ination with the th e future is not uniq ue to our time, we have increasingly focused on it; as Arthur C. Clarke once remarked: “This is the first age that’s ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.” Modern ruins offer us a glimpse into our future. As scholar Jason McGrath McGra th argues: argue s: “The posthuman posthum an gaze at modernist modern ist ruins reminds us that, no matter how many new objects we produce, consume, and discard, those objects will in many cases far outlive us and the purposes to which we put them.” Part of our sense of denial and resistance to modern urban ruin is because of its drastic implications regarding our everyday efforts. Thus sights of decay and abandonment provoke strong resistance in us not so much because we have a fear of death, but because we have a fear of insignificance – they remind us that we will not be 34 Philosophy Now Now December 2017/January 2018
remembered in the long term, especially once decay becomes a permanent feature of the global landscape. As author Alan WeisUs (2012), we have an man notes in his book The World Without Us (2012), “obstinate reluctance to accept that the worst might actually occur” (p.3). Writer Roy Scranton makes a similar claim when he says that “we are predisposed to avoid, ignore, flee, and fight [death] till the very last hour”, so that “much of our energy is spent in denial” ( Learning ( Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene, Anthropocene , 2015, p.90). Hence denial is very much a part of our relations with ruins. We find ourselves moved by these sites almost in an effort to make peace with what they ultimately signify. This is particularly true when visiting modern ruins that have been ruined by disaster or by economic downturn. The Poignancy of Abandoned Theme Parks Abandoned amusement parks are even more poign ant and disconcerting in the absence of the lights and sound that once signalled their life. America’s Land of Oz, Germany’s Cold Warera Spreepark, and Japan’s Takakanonuma Greenland in the Fukushima district, have all been abandoned and have subsequently decayed; but in their ruin they continue to attract a growing number of visitors. Why, exactly, is this the case? Why does the abandoned amusement park become a more powerful image in its sparseness? Firstly, there is a modest mythology that encircles the amusement park, constructed to be a modern dreamscape, epitomising human enjoyment. Its abandonment, therefore, signals a reversal of this dynamic, becoming a site of radical anachronism, and thus perfectly symbolising the natural process of human death and decay. Secondly, whether operational or not, amusement parks resonate on a nostalgic level, and this nostalgia is amplified in the amusement park’s decay since that nostalgia no longer has an outlet. Australian writer and blogger Vanessa Berry wrote of touring around Sydney’s aban doned Magic Kingdom theme park, “In these abandoned places it is easy to imagine oneself to be one of the last humans alive, picking over the remains of a civilisation. Modern ruins are the delight of urban explorers, who enjoy the sense of finding value in what others have discarded. Abandoned theme parks are particularly resoSydney, 2012). She also nant places” (‘Magic Kingdom’, Mirror Kingdom’, Mirror Sydney, observes that amusement parks were “dreamlike from their conception… To explore the rusting rides, bright paint faded, is to be inside a metaphor of lost childhood innocence .” American scholar Mark Pendergrast, moreover, speaks of the separation from reality that amusement parks provide, noting that Coney Island, the New York City neighbourhood with its own amusement area, “revelled in illusion. In the distorting mirrors of its funhouse, everyday reality was suspended” ( Mirror ( Mirror Mirror , 2003, p.253). When we visit decaying amusement parks, however, reality comes rushing back with unrestrainable unrestrainable force. When such such places are closed down and left to ruin we can can no
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longer take solace in the illusion of immortality that these parks strive to promote when operative. But more than our engagement with our own mortality, again, these ruins ruin s disrupt our standard conventions of time and history. They work to dislocate the relationship between the past and the present, incorporating both the past and the future, the dead past existing simultaneously alongside living architecture. While authors, artists, directors and poets have always attempted to depict the aesthetic nature of the future and the possibilities of apocalypse, modern ruins show that we may already be there. As artist Tong Lam beautifully but simply notes, “In a way, we are already post-apocalyptic.” ( Abandoned when we talk talk of Abandoned Fut ures , 2013). Indeed, when social destruction, we almost always do so hypothetically, situating the end within the future rather than in the present time; but as environmentalist David Suzuki put it in a 2007 interview: “The future doesn’t exist. The only thing that exists is now and our memory of what happened in the past. But because we invented the idea of a future, we’re the only animal that realized we can affect the f uture by what we do today.” today. ” (Canada.com). (Canada.com) . Progressing the Idea of Progress If we as a global civilisation are already in the midst of our own ruin, what does this tell us about progress? For one, that progress is not, as is widely believed, irretrievably linked to the future, or to newness. According to ‘technological determinists’, determinists’, not only does technology supposedly drive history, but what’s new is better than preceding technologies, thus linking newness to progress. By this logic, digital downloads are superior to vinyl records; word processors are better than typewriters; and digital cameras are better than film-based analogue ones. Yet although an object may be technically improved, this is not necessarily an improvement in terms of its creative capabilities . In fact, the more technologically improved the gadget, the less effort required on our part to create art, meaning human creativity is often actually compromised. So what we are seeing is rather newness masquerading as progress. Yet typewriter usage – alongside that of vinyl and analog a nalogue ue photogr ph otography aphy – is on the th e rise, ri se, while w hile some people and organisations never relinquished them, defying the logic of technological progress. While the image of a hipster sitting with a typewriter in Starbucks might appear chronolog-
ically inaccurate, the fact that many people continue to use type writers writer s does not, I believe, belie ve, signal a regre ssion, but in fact reframes the argument to favour the notion of intellectual rather than technological progress, showing that technology and intelligence are not one and the same. Yet the general narrative about the continued use of typewriters and other supposedly ‘anachronistic’ technologies is that this is backward, outdated, and strange, just like our obsession with ruins. But for a number of authors, a typewriter is actually superior to digital technologies. British author Will Self, for instance, says that the typewriter forces his mind to slow down and to process thought more efficiently, rather than having his thoughts scattered by the PC. As journalist Neil N eil Hallows writes, w rites, “the “th e computer user us er does their thei r thinking on the screen, and the non-computer user is compelled, because he or she has to retype a whole text, to do a lot more thinking in the head” (‘Why Typewriters Beat Computers’, 2008). Such thoughts give credence to William Faulkner’s idea that “the past is not dead; it’s not even past.” Certain memorabilia can have a present function, defying the logic of linking objects to a certain time and place and discarding them with the momentum of history. The Organic Nature of History For many, history follows a linear development: there is to all things a beginning, middle, and end, and we can differentiate between each period.The plethora of ruins and the widespread use of old technology paints a picture of society not retreating into an antiquated era, but rather, proceeding nonlinearly. They show us that progress is not str aightforward, and can be seen less as historical, and more as intellectual. Instead of a linear pattern of history, what we actually see is that it has what French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-95) calls a rhizomatic (rootlike) structure. With typewriters and decay existing alongside digitisation and growth, our understanding of progress becomes more about intellectual linearity, so that our ideas define and shape progress, rather than technologies and events in sequential time. That is, while we can’t conclusively say what history history is, we can can at least least say say what history history is not: that it is not technological, and not straightforwardly chronological. Or if we talk about chronology, we need to do so through the lens of intellectual history rather than the history of objects. December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now 35
But as Gertrude Stein points out, if history (not the chronological phenomenon, but our knowledge of that phenomenon) teaches us anything, it is that, paradoxically, repetition is almost a necessary aspect of cultural evolution. Of course, this makes it difficult to tell whether our own woes and complaints about the times time s differ in any meaningful way from those of earlier g enerations: whether there there is more truth truth to our own own fears for the the future future than to theirs – especially when we consider the similarities of discontent across centuries. Perhaps the only constant in the history of life is disillusionment with change. As Pyotr Voyd, the central
Entrance to the abandoned Dadipark in Belgium
character of Victor Pelevin’s novel Buddha’s Little Finger (1999) Finger (1999) says, “we are descendants of descendants of the past. The word signifies movement downwards, not upwards. We are not ascendants ” (1999, p.34). This seems seems to be a manner in which which we constan constantly tly frame frame hishistory. For instance, we constantly ask of our society: are we getting stupider? Worried researchers tells us so; but then Socrates is said by Plato to have stated 2,400 years ago: “Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food, and tyrannize their teachers.” We have more or less the same concern in the twenty-first century about the younger generations and their poor grammar, flagrant antisocial behaviour, and obsessive use of technology. We are also told to prepare for the book’s demise at the hands of the internet; but then, Victor Hugo expressed the same fears for the demise of architecture at the hands of the book; while Samuel Taylor Coleridge criticised the novel for impairing memory. As Jill Lepore puts it, “Every age has a theory of rising and falling, of growth and decay, of bloom and wilt: a theory of nature.” (‘The Disruption Machine’, The New Yorker , June 2014). So is there any particular importance to our own cultural anxieties, or are they merely part of an inevitably repeating pattern? Is it simply that our own fears have been more easily voiced and disseminated via more efficient technologies? Is there any truth to our discontent that separates us from earlier centuries – thereby legitimising our fears – or is it simply part of one consistent, shared concern that is part of the same evolutionary matrix, in which history is not a thing divided but a continuous, uninterrupted stream of sameness – in which a distinction between time periods is all but illusory? 36 Philosophy Now Now December 2017/January 2018
Historical Deleuzion Gilles Deleuze is a particularly useful philosopher to employ here. Deleuze discusses a phenomenon he calls ‘difference within repetition’ repet ition’.. For Deleuze, Deleu ze, “life itself itsel f is described descri bed as a dynamic and active force of repetition producing difference” (Adrian Parr, Deleuze Dictionary, Dictionary, 2010, p.225), and in repetition there is the ‘possibility of reinvention’, for although we repeat, we do not uniformly not uniformly repeat. Thus within a cycle of occurrences we can see subtle deviations emerging in a pattern perhaps mismistaken as pure monotony. For instance, we still show all our fears regarding the state of our intellects – but in slightly different ways as our our concerns move from one one technology to another. Hence we should not worry that many are returning to type writers in lieu lie u of their supposedl y more sophisticated sophistica ted alternatives, because this demonstrates a rebellion against the rigid order of time; that is, with the expectations of behaviour and actions supposedly befitting one’s time. Perhaps we should laud those who retreat into such ‘anachronistic’ technologies, and ridicule those who unthinkingly pursue novelty. As Friedrich Nietzsche pointed out, the philosopher needs to be out of phase and at odds with their own time, and should ideally be “a person of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow… his enemy has always been the ideal of today” (Beyond ( Beyond Good and Evil , 1886, p.106). For Nietzsche, the philosopher’s task lies in “being the bad conscience of their age.” In this sense, the philosopher, the writer, the artist, and the poet, are called to be women and men outside their time. For Victor Pelevin, there are those who adapt to change – those who essentially change with the times; those who anticipate change, adapting to it more quickly as a result; and those who make change “by creeping across to occupy the quarter from which they think the wind will blow. Following which, the wind has no option but to blow from that very quarter” (Generation ( Generation P , 1999, p.36). Our task is to occupy that quarter. When I think of the dilapidated house on my old street, the very concept of economy, or of culture, evaporates. On the face of it there appears to be a clear and discernable difference between the decaying house and the vibrant one next to it. But they belong to the same matrix of existence, because all things that are made are always already in the process of ruin. Progress is falsely understood as a resistance to ruin; but in that we neglect the fact that progress exists alongside ruin – that all the contradictory forces of time are occurring simultaneously. Just as this house sinks into the earth, so too will the one beside it, eventually. This recognition helps us disobey the conventions of time – hence our blatant engagement with modern ruins; hence our continued use of objects and phenomena some consider obsolete. These anachronistic elements force us to engage with phenomena before and beyond our own time in an e ffort to challenge the present. We may then be invited to see history as something chaotically overwhelmed by the struggle between the past, present and future, all within the same space. And only once we understand under stand how time really real ly operates oper ates and how to use elements outside of our own time effectively will we begin to understand the true nature of progress. © SIOBHAN LYONS 2017
Siobhan Lyons is a media scholar at Macquarie University, where she earned her PhD in media and cultural studies.
Question of the Month
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How Can I Know Right From Wrong?
The following responses to this basic ethical question each win a random book.
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o understand how acquire have moral knowledge, we first need to understand what sort of thing we are talking about when we we speak speak of right and wrong. I want to propose propose a non-naturalist account of morality as first put forth by G.E. Moore in his Principia Ethica (1903). Following Moore, we can conceive of morality as a sort of universal dimension. All actions fall some where in this moral dimension, dimension, from extremely extremely good to extremely extremely bad and a neutral middle. Let me now liken morality to time. There is no n o physical aspect of reality to which we can point that shows time itself. But we don’t need something physical to point at to know that the passage of time occurs. Rather, time seems to impress itself upon us because our mental faculties are designed to experience its passing. This seems true of morality too. When we witness a murder and say that it’s wrong, we aren’t pointing to a physical entity of ‘wrongness’; instead we are highlighting a value that is inherent in the witnessed action. The moral dimension impresses itself on us in such a way that we can perceive moral properties. One may wonder how, if we can apprehend moral facts in this way, that there is still widespread widespread disagreement disagreement on moral matters. But moral facts aren’t all as simple as ‘killing is bad’ and ‘being helpful is good’. Killing can’t be absolutely wrong, since someone someone may rightly kill a person to stop the detonation of a bomb in a school. Actions have a range of different motivations and unseen background facts. To know if something complex is moral, we need to know not only the action but the cause, the mind-set of the person taking the action, and the intended effect. Moral knowledge can be derived from measuring the impressions a person has about an action, and investigating the thinking of the person who made the action. Some people are better at receiving these impressions and thus turning them into knowledge. This isn’t to turn ethicists into priests of morality. It is, as my metaethics professor said, like space: someone may constantly bump their head due to a lack of spatial awareness. We can all gain better knowledge of morality by learning learn ing how to better read our moral impressions. UCKLAND, NZ JULIAN SHIELDS, M ANLY , A UCKLAND
life; I think the principle of sanctity of life has been forsaken by murderers. Finally take the decision. Unfortunately valid and relevant moral principles clash, and we may have to decide which one we should follow of two equally pertinent claims. My utilitarian approach is that t hat the most important objective is usually the one that brings the most good into the world; but that is not always the case. I have a greater duty to some than to others, which clashes with the duty to save more lives than fewer: but I will save my own child rather than ten strangers. Morality started as care of kin ki n and we should not stray too far from its roots. Also some principles may be intrinsically more important than others. Perhaps it is more important not to take life than to save it, so I should refuse to kill one to save two. But what if I can save fifty by killing one? Morality can be relative to circumstances, not absolute, and at some point the utilitarian principle wins. Analysing analogous situations where the answer is clear is useful; seeing how they differ from the current c urrent situation clarifies thinking. And always discuss problems both with those you respect respect and with those who disagree disagree with you. When you get it wrong, forgive yourself, and try to do better next time. LLEN SHAW , H AREWOOD, LEEDS A LLEN
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erhaps the best way to answer this question is to take commonly accepted ethical notions and appraise them for the case at hand, as accordance to a central ethical principle often appears a sound basis of ethical action. action . One such principles is the Golden Rule (‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’), variously variously occurring in in many religious religious and belief systems. systems. The idea that notions notions such as this one one are reliable indicators of ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ is persuasive. Some moralists believe ethica l action arises from a sense of duty, and not from a natural predisposition to good behaviour. Recognising responsibilities to others, not self-interest, does seem morally positive. Furthermore, following Kant, some theorists believe we must not treat others ‘merely as a means to an end’ but rather as ‘ends in themselves’, acknowledging their capacity for ethical thought. Treating people as merely an end not a means seems ethically ethicall y sound: it is altruistic and respectful of others; arguably very important qualities here is no magic formula, but there is a pathway which may in right ethical behaviour. help in situations of doubt. First, ascertain the facts of a sitHowever, rigid application of ethical rules may have seemingly uation. Ignorance never promotes good decisions. Let others unethical conclusions. The majority of people would believe it thrust on you facts you would rather overlook. Seco Second, nd, and more wrong wrong to lie in most most circums circumstanc tances es yet yet right right to lie lie in in specif specific ic situsitudifficult, try to predict the consequences of the actions you might ations, such as to save a life. Secondly, an emphasis upon the importake. Unfortunately even correctly predicted consequences them- tance of duty can give the impression that ethics is demanding and selves cause unforeseeable consequences consequences.. But even the most ded- counter-intuitive, counter-intuiti ve, which is not entirely convincing: it seems difficult icated non-consequentialist must consider consequences because to criticise a naturally generous person for not being truly ethical actually conferring benefit on others is an important moral prin- because they do not act out of a sense of duty. Finally, although ciple, if not an overriding one. Third, look at the moral principles most would agree we should respect and value others persons, we which tell you to do one thing or the other. Those principles must may accept treating others as a means if the end is liable to have be both valid and relevant, which is often arguable. Catholics significantly more favourable consequences. For example, many think that divorce is wrong, but Islam makes divorce easy for men. people would agree it is right to sacrifice the life of one person if it You think think that we must must respect respect the the sanctity sanctity of even a murderer’s murderer’s saves many lives, and in fact wrong not to do so. So it seems that
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although people often have clear sentiments which tell them when behaviour is right or wrong, they also accept that there are times when rigid rigid adherence adherence to the same principl principles es is problemat problematic ic and/or and/or unethical, making ethics as uncertain as any other branch of philosophy. This means absolute ethical judgements on right and wrong wrong are difficul difficult, t, so importan importantt ethical ethical debates debates remain remain unresolv unresolved. ed. JONATHAN TIPTON, PRESTON, L ANCASHIRE
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hilosophers can quibble over many different theories, but in the end I would advocate a simple boo-hurrah approach to discerning right from wrong. Okay, I’m not accounting for psychopaths. Nevertheless, I would argue that the majority of human beings have an innate sense of disgust at immoral acts, stemming from empathy. If you want to know if your actions towards another individual are right or wrong, just ask yourself if that’s how you would want to be treated. That’s the objectivity: we’re living, aware creatures. Why complicate it more than that? RMSTON, M ANCHESTER MORGAN MILLARD, U RMSTON
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t might be inferred from the question that discerning disce rning right from cognitive.. Thus, employing the terminology wrong is essentially essentially cognitive of Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives in the cognitive domain, I am able to recall things recall things deemed right or wrong and I can understand why why they are so. I can apply my recall and understanding of right and wrong to act appropriately in specific circumstances; I can analyse can analyse behaviours and determine which are evaluate why some are right or wrong; and right and wrong; I can evaluate why I can create more finely nuanced conceptions of rightness or wrongness. wrongness. This learning is acquired acquired by trial and error, and inferred from the reactions of other people to what I do or say. But, it is an affective an affective issue too: the reactions of others to what I say or do evoke feelings in me. To use Bloom in this domain: initially, I attend to or note particular actions that evoke responses respond to some actions in from others or feelings in me. I learn to respond to some circumstances by others. I feel, too, that some responses are more valued by valued by others or by myself. I organise some of these valued responses according to some principles. Eventually, these principles interlink so that my conduct is characterised by them. For example, when my mother first put me to her breast I followed an innate need for sustenance. However, I felt pleasures of satiation, of warmth, of security. I cried when I felt hunger, or cold and, later, fear. I learned that this woman provided for these needs,
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on demand. Then, without intent, my toothless gums squeezed the nipple too hard. My mother flinched, drew away, withdrawing food. I cried, and supply was restored. I attended to those things and remembered: I responded to maternal actions, noted that for some of my actions she would provide things which gave pleasure and for others her response provided less pleasure. I learned which things my mother valued and led to her supply of pleasure to me. She was thus defining right and wrong. As I acquired language, I conceptualised these ideas and, in dialogue with her, and, increasingly, with others, refined these concepts. Right and wrong are defined socially by interactions amongst other people and me. They are learned learned.. My desire desire for acceptance acceptance into society society made made me me learn and conform to its ideas of rightness or wrongness. M ACDONALD, G LASGOW LASDAIR M LASGOW A LASDAIR
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s an individual I am born into a society requiring adherence to a set of rules and values by which I did not choose to be bound. I am expected to behave in a certain way and live by certain rules in order to live in harmony with my fellow citizens. Assuming I have no psychological disorder, I begin to learn these societal expectations from an early age, from associations with groups, which form my cultural cultural identity. identity. As As a member member of a family, family, a religion, a country, a school, a workplace, I am taught the practices, values and rules of those associations. For example, as a young family member, I learn through guidance by parents pare nts that it is bad to be spiteful to siblings, and that the right behaviour sets a good example to younger siblings who may learn right from wrong from me. As an adult, I am bound by an employment contract, losing my job if I breach it. As an autonomous being, I take responsibility for my actions regarding my choice of associations. associat ions. With exposure to other cultures, moralities and belief systems, I may start to question my learned behaviours and morals, reasoning as to whether or not I wish to maintain those associations, weighing wei ghing up the consequences of discontinuing with what I know, and attaching attac hing myself to new associations and groups – for example, changing religion and the effect this may have on my family and friends. But in general, I can know right from wrong through my identity associations, sanctioning any resultant punishment concerning the choices I make as an adult. There may be conflicts: for example, some cultures advocate honour killings, whereas others maintain it is never right to kill aanother nother person. So what to do if you associate with a culture culture that that advocates advocates honour honour killings, killings, but the laws of the society in which you live do not allow this? Choosing to stray stra y from your original original associations associations may result result in penal punishmen punishment. t. UGELEY , S TAFFS SHARON P AINTER , R UGELEY
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asically, I can’t. Not in any definitive way. Unlike laws of physics, which govern regardless of human understanding, concepts of right and wrong are constructions, products of a developing self-awareness. Reason, as Nietzsche suggests, was a late addition to our animal instincts. To highlight the implications of this, look at attitudes towards killing. For early humans, the crime of ‘murder’ would be a nonsensical idea. One had to kill to survive, making ‘murder’ an accepted hazard of daily life. Only the move from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to settled communities lessened the need to slaughter in self-defence, thus beginning the slow march to recognising murder as immoral. However, there is a problem. Many believe believe killing killing can be be justifi justified ed in some circumstan circumstances. ces. Such ambiguities mean that knowing right from wrong in any absolute sense is impossible, even in seemingly clear-cut instances. But the same applies in other areas. No matter how abhorrent and objecHow Can I Know Right Ri ght From Wrong?
tionably wrong I believe various crimes to be, an example of historical permissibility can be found. Humans, at some point, have accepted rape, theft and persecution without question. As right and wrong wrong do not exist exist outside outside the collecti collective ve consciou conscioussness of the planet’s population at a particular moment, it is only possible to pass judgement in hindsight. We could argue that changing attitudes are evidence of an inherent ‘wrongness’ in certain acts, perhaps pointing to a natural order of right and wrong similar to discovering laws of physics. But such convictions have proved false before. For millennia it was thought that religious texts gave definitive answers; yet if a Creator were to reveal themselves and say, ‘Same sex marriage is wrong’, or ‘Capital punishment is right’, a lot of people, including me, would have tremendous difficulty accepting it. Suddenly, we’d irrefutably irre futably know right and wrong, but feel that many ‘right’ things were ‘wrong’, and vice versa. versa. Some aspects of right and wrong may seem given, but for the most part we have to follow our conscience. For this reason, nothing is certain. I simply have to do my best. LENN BRADFORD, SUTTON IN A SHFIELD SHFIELD, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE G LENN
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he short answer is, I can’t. Dr Oliver Scott Curry of Oxford University has essentially cracked the problem of morality, based on empirical evidence from sixty cultures, present and historical. What follows is my take on his original thoughts, so the random book should go to him. Like Rome and its hills, morality is built on seven naturally evolved values, held to varying degrees, whose functions are promoting cooperation or resolving conflict. The greatest of these is Possession, held sacrosanct by nine tenths of cultures and the law. Next come Kinship, Loyalty and Reciprocity, espoused by three quarters. Over half of cultures rate Respect (for the powerful) and Humility (of the powerless). Last and least comes Fairness, valued by only 15%. So dosvidanya socialism, and never give a sucker an even break. The punch line is, there are no other moral values . Each individual can claim their peculiar principle, plus aesthetic judgment; but only these seven values can be truly shared. Cultures and societies differ in the scope and priority they ascribe to these seven pillars of morality. Right is what helps achieve some conscious or unconscious goal, be it reproduction, reproduction, social cohesion, long life, prosperity, prospe rity, or conquest. Wrong is what obstructs the goal, and evil is interpreted as doing so intentionally. Values may be incompatible, one negating another with traumatic results. What if the goal is to wield absolute domination over absolute submission, forever? DR NICHOLAS B. T AYLOR , LITTLE S ANDHURST
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hat can we say about the question? First, we must already to an extent know the answer: we must already have some idea what ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ mean. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t understand the question. But at the same time, we disagree with others about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. But surely, if we know ourselves what is right right and wrong, all all we need to do is is explain what what those words refer to when we use them, others others can explain what they they are referring to, and our apparent disagreement will be resolved? Yet we we cannot cannot do do this. this. We can can all look at an an action, action, be in total agreement about the facts, about what the action consists of, about what effects it has, yet still disagree about whether or not it is right. If that is the case, then we cannot be arguing about the nature of that action. Our disagreement – and thus what we each mean by ‘right’ – must lie elsewhere. This helps explain why we sometimes cannot agree about the rightness of an action: its degree of rightHow Can I Know Right From Wrong? Wrong?
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ness can only be judged comparatively, against other actions. Then which actions? actions? If we could could name the property property that distindistinguished ‘right’ actions from the rest, we would have also named what we meant by rightness and wrongness. wrongness. But if we could do that, then we would be back to rightness and wrongness referring to some fact, and any apparent disputes would be revealed reveale d as simply misunderstandings. But again, our failure to agree suggests this is cannot be the case. If right and wrong are graduations of a single system, and if we cannot place boundaries on that system, then that system must contain everything. What sorts of systems contain everything, or try to? Philosophical ones. So I would argue that our individual understanding of right and wrong is determined by our own philosophy. In so far as we have such a general philosophy, then we already know right and wrong. If we are unsure of them, it is because our philosophy remains unformed in our own minds. HITE, LONDON JOHN W HITE
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hy should we expect to be able to know right righ t from wrong? Morality Morality isn’t written into the universe the way facts of nature seem to be: it’s a matter of human choice, and people choose to respond to moral issues in different diffe rent ways. Systems such as Bentham’s utilitarianism or Kant’s deontology have important insights but they all have drawbacks – the first for its wilful disregard of innocent people’s (assumed) rights, rig hts, the second for its disregard of consequences. But what is the yardstick against which we judge the apparent failings of these two systems? systems? For positivists, it’s a matter of psychology based on evolution and upbring ing. Does this lead to relativism, with its apparent contradiction that we should never intervene in another culture or criticise a psychopath? I don’t think so. Within most polities the idea of inflicting unnecessary pain on the innocent is abhorrent. Through some inner instinct or psychological preference, prefere nce, we know (or is it believe?) that such cruelty is wrong. And we know if we follow certain rules that our society will give us outcomes that more or less accord with our moral preferences. In many countries enough people share enough of these values to give a sense of common purpose in pursuit of morality. Why shouldn’t we seek to conv ince others, that ours is a way of life that suits human psychological preferences, both theirs and ours? However, that cohesive set of common instincts breaks down in more problematic cases such as abortion or various versions of Phillipa Foot’s ‘trolley problem’. For these there may be no agreement on what is right and we don’t have a method of deciding in some formulaic way what the correct action is. Any solution will cut across someone’s inner instinct, and there is no other way of testing the decision-making process. We agonise over these difficult problems. Perhaps the important question is not Did we get the morally right solution? – where there may be none – but Did we agonise enough? Did we grapple and make sure we looked at the problem from all possible sides? EEBLE, H ARROW , LONDON PETER K EEBLE The next question is: W Please give and justify your answer in less than 400 words. The prize is a semi-random book from our book mountain. Subject lines should be marked ‘Question of the Month’, and must be received by 12th February 2018. If you want a chance of getting a book, please include your physical address. Submission is permission to reproduce your answer. December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now
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Brief Lives
Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) In Thoreau’s Thoreau ’s bicentenary bicenten ary,, Martin Jenkins looks at the famous American eccentric. eccentric.
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few years ago I went into a bookshop to buy a copy of Thoreau’s Thoreau’s Walden (1854). I couldn’t find one, but the assistant could: in the fiction section. This may reflect the difficulty of classifying Thoreau. Was he a nature writer, a poet, a travel writer, a political political thinker, thinker, even even a philosophilosopher – even all of these? Perhaps; but not, I am certain, a novelist! Thoreau’s Thoreau’s works works do not help to classify classify him. him. He wrote wrote widely on a range of subjects. He only published three full-length full-l ength books, but wrote numerous essays and lectures, and he kept a journal which ran to two million million words. words. However, However, two works works stand stand out philosophically: Walden and the essay Civil Disobedience (1849). Life David Henry Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, in 1817. (He called himself Henry David from 1837, the year he started his journal. Both may be seen as expressions of his individuality.) His father was at first a farmer; but also ran a grocery store, worked as a teacher in Boston, and then returned to Concord to run the family’s pencil factory. Thoreau was sent to Harvard Harva rd in 1833. He undert ook more than the required curriculum, and graduated in 1837. Returning to Concord, he took a job in his old primary school, but resigned rather than flog his pupils. Subsequently he opened a secondary school with his brother John. About this time Henry Henry was attending meetings of the group loosely known as ‘The New England Transcendentalists’ at Ralph Waldo Emerson’s house in Concord. This group was united more by interests than by ideas: the one thing that they agreed on was opposition to slavery. However, they managed to create a magazine, The Dial , in which they expressed their various ideas, and to which Thoreau contributed more than thirty essays and other works. In 1839 both John and Henry Thoreau fell in love with Ellen Sewell. She rejected both their proposals. This is the only known romantic attachment in Thoreau’s life. In 1841, John’s ill health resulted in the closure of the school; and in 1842 John died of tetanus after cutting himself shaving. Henry was devastated and for a while suffered a psychosomatic paralysis. As early as 1837, Henry Thoreau Thoreau had improved improved the graphite used in the family firm’s pencils. In 1844 he developed an improved drilling machine for the pencils, as well as pioneering shades of graphite. In the same year, when Emerson could not get a single Concord church to offer him space for an anti-slavery lecture, Thoreau organised the use of the courthouse. In 1850, when someone someon e was needed neede d to go to recover recov er the body and manuscripts of Margaret Fuller after she drowned in a shipwreck, it was Thoreau who undertook the job. So Thoreau was an eminently practical man, and could have been a commercial success. But he chose a different road, and spent most of the rest of his life relying on odd surveying jobs and work as a handyman. In 1845 Thoreau began to construct a cabin in the woods by Walden Pond, about a mile and a half from Concord. He moved 40 Philosophy Now
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in on July 4th, and remained there until 1849. He was not a hermit, nor did he set out to be self-sufficient: by his own admission he spent a lot of time with friends, and at his family home, and often had meals there. Indeed, the most famous incident of his life occurred because he went into town to collect a shoe repair from the cobbler, whereupon he was arrested for non-payment of his poll tax and imprisoned for a night, being released after a friend paid it for him. Thoreau refused to pay the tax in protest at the state’s collusion with slavery in the Southern states. Anarchy In The USA The outcome ou tcome of this experience experi ence was w as Civil Disobedience, Disobedience, which opens with a statement of his political philosophy: “I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least;’ and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe – ‘That government is best which governs not at all’; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.” have .”
This is, of cour se, anarchism; anarc hism; but, as the t he last phrase phr ase shows, Thoreau believed that human beings had to become worthy of it. In the meantime, how should those who are worthy of it act towards the state as it exists? Thoreau’s Thoreau’s answer answer is in one one sense sense complex complex but but in in another another sense simple: the individual must follow their own conscience, and refuse loyalty and obedience to the state which lacks moral virtue. Slavery, he says, is not maintained by Southern slave-owners, but by Northerners who tolerate it in the interests of maintaining the state. However, Thoreau is not a rampant individualist. Having refused to pay his poll tax, he writes: “I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as desirous of being a good neighbour as I am of being a bad subject.” He insists on being a good member of the community – just not of the state. A fter being released from prison, he joined a party who were going out to pick huckleberries (“who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct”), and two miles outside Concord “the State was nowhere to be seen.” Civil Disobedience is arguably the most influential of Thoreau’s writings. writings. Reading Reading it it convinced convinced Gandhi to develop develop his his theory theory and and practice; and maybe Gandhi, in naming his method satya method satyagraha graha,, or ‘truth-force’, came close to summarising Thoreau’s philosophy. Into The Woods If Thoreau’s stay in the woods was not an exercise in self-sufficiency, what was it? It was an exercise in self-exploration. “Be a Columbus,” Thoreau wrote, “to whole new contine continents nts and and worlds worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.” If Civil Disobedience Disobedience explores the proper relationship of the individual and the state, Walden asks how the individual should properly relate to himself, others, and the world in general. How do we perfect ourselves, and
Henry David Thoreau Portrait by Darren McAndrew 2017
thus become worthy of the ideal state? And to answer answe r that question for yourself, you need to know who you are as an individual. In Walden’s long opening chapter Thoreau mounts a critique of modern life and how it generates ‘needs’ (for ‘better’ shelter, clothing, food, etc) which are not needs at all. He memorably describes modern heating as being “cooked, of course à la mode.” He also has no time for the “need for speed” and is unimpressed by the railroad. He writes: “Our inventions… are but improved impr oved means to an unimproved end… We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communi-
cate… As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly.”
Having expressed his dissatisfaction with the contemporary world, Thoreau moves on to put forward forward the alternative alternative he disdiscovered by living at Walden. Thoreau was not living there to avoid human company. He begins the chapter ‘Visitors’ thus: “I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way.” He claims claims to have had up to to thirty thirty people people in his hut hut at one time; his circle included thinkers such as Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller. But most of the ‘Visitor’ chapDecember 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now 41
Brief Lives ter is concerned with one man, a Canadian woodcutter. Thoreau clearly enjoyed his company, and “did not know whether he was as wise as Shakespeare or as simply ignorant as a chi ld.” The woodcutter did not want to change the world but knew how to live contentedly in it; he had some thoughts, but not great ones: he was, Thoreau says, humble without knowing what humility was. It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast to the high thinking of the Transcendentalists; but not hard to understand why Thoreau might have preferred the the woodcutter. woodcutter. This theme of company is continued continued in the chapter ‘Former Inhabitants’, Inhabitants’, in which Thoreau communes with the memory of people who formerly lived nearby: two slaves, a coloured woman, a potter, a ditcher, a tavern-keeper. This is Thoreau’s history of Concord: not its great men, nor “the shot heard round the world” but the humble people forgotten except in folk memory. Thoreau had a great great deal deal of solitude at his his hut. hut. Perhaps living there enabled him to ration his human contact, giving him time to explore himself, to encounter nature more directly, to meet and talk with people outside his usual circles, and most importantly, to think. “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth,” he writes, recognising that truth is what human beings often do not want. On that note he creates a brilliant simile for how his book will be received by comparing it with the ice from Walden Pond: Pond: “Southern “Southern customers customers objected objected to to its blue colour, colour, which is the evidence of of its purity, purity, as if it were were muddy, and preferred the Cambridge ice, which is white, but tastes of weeds.” For Thoreau, the truth is discovered by looking beyond appearance and testing reality. Thoreau is often of ten regarded rega rded as a ‘spiri tual’ writer. write r. But as has been shown, he was a practical man, and towards the end of Walden he brings together the search for truth and practicality: “Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. ‘Tell the tailors,’ said he, ‘to remember to make a knot in their thread before they take their first stitch.’ His companion’s prayer is forgotten.”
(The last sentence reminds us that Thoreau was possessed of a dry humour. For another example, “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”)
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Replica of Thoreau’s cabin in the woods Now December 2017/January 2018 42 Philosophy Now
Out Of The Woods Thoreau Thoreau left left the woods woods perhaps perhaps becau because se Emerson Emerson wanted wanted him him to look after his house while he was on a lecture tour; but his own explaexpla nation is that “I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there” there ” (Walden); t he pond. I left it Walden); or, “I do not know what made me leave the as unaccountably as I went to it. To speak sincerely, I went there because I had got ready to go; g o; I left it for the same reason” re ason” ( Jour ( Journal ). nal ). This comes comes close close to “It “It seemed seemed like a good good idea at the the time. time.”” From this point on Thoreau seems to have distanced himself somewhat from the Transcendentalists. He was outraged by the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, which required free states to return escaped slaves to their owners in the South. He took an active part in the underground railroad smuggling slaves out of the South: on at least one occasion he provided shelter and a route to Canada for a fugitive slave. Thoreau continued to think, as his writings prove; but he was becoming more of an activist. The most most controversial controversial episode of Thoreau’s Thoreau’s life occurred occurred in 1857, when he met John Brown of Kansas, an abolitionist who promoted armed insurrection on behalf of that cause, and gave him the fullest support, even writing and publishing ‘A Plea for John Brown’ Brown’ after Brown’s Brown’s raid on on Harper’s Ferry in 1859. Thoreau’s father died in 1859, which left Henry head of of the family and responsible for his mother and sister. In 1860 he developed bronchitis and travelled to Minnesota for a cure. Here he met members of the Sioux Nation, and was concerned about their treatment by the federal government – an activist to the last. The cure cur e did not work. wo rk. Thoreau Thor eau returned ret urned to Concord, C oncord, made m ade arrangements for the posthumous publication of The Maine Woods (1864), Woods (1864), and died of tuberculosis on May 6th 1862. Assessments One tendency within Thoreau scholarship has been to divert attention from what he says by calling its context into question. He has been criticised for not being economically self-sufficient self-sufficient (when he did not set out to be); and Carl Bode has put forward a psychoanalytic psychoanalytic explanation which sees Thoreau’s hostility to the state as linked to an Oedipal hatred of his father and John Brown as a father figure. Anything rather than acknowledge that Thoreau’s (admittedly threatening) ideas might be worth considering in their own right! It seems more likely that what Thoreau saw in John Brown was a reflection of his own development. He had moved from being a thinker to being an activist. Emerson and his circle may have spoken and written against slavery, but they were not recorded as sheltering runaway slaves, as Thoreau did. Thoreau recognised in Brown someone who not only believed in a cause, but did something about it. Thoreau can be pr esented as an outsider, out sider, but that doe s not appear to be how his Concord neighbours viewed him. Small communities can be intolerant of difference; but Thoreau was accepted as a member of his community. He was eccentric, perhaps: one of that increasingly rare breed, the Yankee individualist. Yet he got on with people; he gave freely of his time and thoughts to lecture in the Concord Lyceum (and was allowed to do so); and he kept getting hired. After all, he was a damn good surveyor, and knew how to make a good pencil. © MARTIN JENKINS 2017
Martin Martin Jenkin Jenkinss is a retir retired ed commun community ity worker worker and Quaker Quaker in London. London.
Letters When inspiration strikes, don’t bottle it up! Now w Write to me at: Philosophy No 43a Jerningham Road • London • SE14 5NQ, U.K. or email rick.lewis@philosophynow
[email protected] .org Keep them short and keep them coming! Panpsychic Ricochets DEAR EDITOR : Issue 121 contained four articles on radical theories of consciousness. The guest editor, Dr Philip Goff, is one of the four authors. It might have been better if an editor had been invited who was was more detached from the the debate, debate, as all four contributors, to varying degrees, are sympathetic to panpsychism. To descri describe be panpsy panpsychism chism as counteri counterinntuitive is a considerable understatement. The only only example example of conscious consciousness ness to which we have have direct direct access access is that of humans, and this we can confidently assert is dependent upon the activity of our brains. By analogy, on observing the behaviour of higher animals we accept them as being conscious too. How far down the animal kingdom this goes is debatable. Most of us would be comfortable accrediting mice with some level of consciousness, but would draw the line at, say, an amoeba. But panpsychists regard all physical entities as entities as possessing consciousness. This extraordinary claim is founded upon our inability to give a detailed account of how consciousness emerges in objects made up of quarks, electrons etc. Presumably if quarks and electrons have some rudimentary consciousness, then a uranium atom, say, which is much more complex, has a considerably enhanced level of consciousness. What about a pebble on the beach? What kind of inner life does it possess? By the time we get to the Rock of Gibraltar it must have a very substantial conscious mental life indeed! I confidently assert that no one has, or ever will have, any evidence evidence that that it has. I’m not arguing that consciousness consciousness could only exist in biological entities. In the vastness of the universe who can say what might have emerged? I also also have an open mind regarding man-made conscious systems. That some computerbased systems exhibit at least some aspects of intelligence is indisputable. We must be careful not to set the level of intelligence demanded too high for consciousness or we will disqualify most
animals, and indeed many humans. The myster mysterious iousness ness of all all mental mental processes generally, and consciousness in particular, is reminiscent of the earlier debate between mechanists and vitalists. Virtually Virtually nobody nobody now now defends defends the notio notion n of the élan vital as a necessity for life. I believe that panpsychism will suffer the same fate. I don’t know whether science will ever wholly wholly understand understand consciousconsciousness, but no doubt much will be learnt in the endeavour. It is certainly much too early to give up on the enterprise. ADCLIFFE FE, W ELWYN ELWYN G DN DN CITY JOHN R ADCLIF DEAR EDITOR : While agnostic on the issue, I would offer a couple of points in support of Phillip Goff’s panpsychism in Issue 121. I condition this on downplaying the term ‘consciousness’ and turn, rather, to a suggestion made by Camilla Martin Martin in in the PN the PN podcast, ‘Free Will and the Brain’ [available at philosophynow.org/podcasts, Ed]: What we experience experience as consciou consciousnes snesss is a composite effect of data. First, I would ask the reader to think about the act of reading this, then think about their selves reading this, then think about their selves thinking about their selves reading this... We could go on like that forever. But what we’ll never see is what is looking out: the perceiving thing. And how is our basic perception any different to that of, say, a gnat? The only difference, as Douglas Hofstadter points out in I in I Am A Strange Loop, is the symbolic filters we use. And why stop with a gnat? Plants, as recent research suggests, communicate. How far of a jump would it be to basic elements containing data? D.E. T ARKINGTON, BELLEVUE, NE DEAR EDITOR : The idea of panpsychism panpsychism is that awareness is inherent in every aspect of matter, even though normally we only recognise recognise it in the the animal kingdom. The argument seems to be that because particles have consciousness, we are also able to have consciousness. But
no explanation is given of how this may work. It’s a ‘just so’ story. Our consciousness however means that we are aware of ourselves, and of ourselves in relation to our surroundings. So in what way are the physical properties of sub-atomic sub-atomic particles – mass, spin, charge, etc – in their intrinsic intrinsic nature nature forms of awareness, as Dr Goff asserts? Yes, they they interact interact with other particles particles in precise ways, but that’s not awareness. Panpsychists argue that it’s a question of degree. So we don’t ascribe humanlike awareness to mice or spiders. And so just as we we find find it difficult difficult to imagine imagine having a spider’s form of awareness, we find it even more difficult to understand the awareness enjoyed by a subatomic particle. And this, they say, leaves open the possibility that it has awareness in some way. This is, however, argument by analogy, which has no logical value. And, more importantly, if the argument is to have any persuasive power, consciousness must be recognisably the same at whatever level it is said to exist. Unless we want to be be in Humpty Humpty Dumpty Dumpty land, ‘consciousness’ cannot completely change meaning as it shrinks. Indeed, if panpsychism is the best explanation currently available, I think I shall get out my selfaware Ouija board to see what’s next in line to ‘explain’ consciousness. THOMAS JEFFREYS, W ARWICKSHIRE DEAR EDITOR : As a reason for disbelieving panpsychism, Raymond Tallis, in ‘Against Panpsychism’ ( PN 121), PN 121), asks how the macroscopic consciousness of organisms can be built up out of elementary constituents and why such building up happens in some things but not others – in brains, for example, and not pebbles. The answer answer is found found in the the organiza organiza-tion of the elementary constituents. If everything has an inside or subjective aspect as panpsychism suggests, as well as an outside or objective aspect, then the organization of the outside should have some bearing on the richness of the
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Letters inside. There is something unique about how matter is organized in living beings, as opposed to non-living things, that can account for the emergence of our complex and vivid form of consciousness. Living things are strikingly different from inanimate objects. The matter that composes living things is constantly changing through metabolism, the process by which matter is ingested, transformed and excreted. What persists is not the matter itself but the form in which that matter matter is organized. organized. I follow follow Hans Jonas here (pp.64-67 in Mortali in Mortality ty and Morality, Morality , ed. Lawrence Vogel, 1996), when he says that the sense of being a whole conscious conscious entity emerges with the ability of a simple organism to maintain its structure through time by exchanging matter with its environment. Thus a changing material process that has a unity of form over time gives rise to a unity of experience over time which is of a higher order than the micro-experiences of the constituent elements. This higher higher order order depends depends on the the abilability of mentality to bleed through, so to speak, from one event to another. Anecdotal evidence of telepathy suggests that mentality does indeed have such an ability. Given this account of how the mentalities of constituents can combine to form a single richer mentality, panpsychism panpsychism does indeed make sense. I discuss the argument for panpsychism in detail at bmeacham.com/blog/?p=568 bmeacham.com/blog/?p=568 BILL MEACHAM, USA DEAR EDITOR : As a means to understand consciousness, I believe that panexper panexperienientialism (a term coined by the Whiteheadian David Ray Griffin) is to be preferred to panpsychism. It has the advantage of being entirely consistent with the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness. In panexperientialism, a fleeting experience is generated whenever physical systems exchange energy-information, since they’re equivalent. How this might happen can be understood by considering the simplest stable atomic system, the hydrogen atom. In its lowest energy state, it consists of a positively charged proton orbited by a single negatively charged electron. Here we have a system of subatomic particles forming a dynamic yet self-contained physical system with no consciousness. When, however, this system interacts with an externally sourced photon, the electron jumps to a
higher energy orbital. From the information perspective, the system has responded to a specific input of datum, which for the panexp panexperient erientialis ialistt is a fleetfleeting experience of something outside itself. Consciousness is a result of the evolutionary process when organisms are selected that are able to integrate, attenuate or amplify trillions of such data. As a result, the organism experiences the build-up of emotional states. These emotions produce actions which, as required by evolution, must be directed towards the organism’s survival and reproduction. In this way, the process of evolution ensures that simple experiences become sophisticated presentations of the world. DR S TEVE BREWER , S T I VES DEAR EDITOR : Philip Goff suggests that physicalists might object to panpsychist claims by arguing that “We just need a ‘Darwin of consciousness’ to come along” (p.7). I suggest that physicalists already have Darwin[s] of consciousness. One was Gerald Edelman (1929-2014), who shared a 1972 Nobel Prize with Rodney Robert Porter and wrote Bright Air, Brilliant Fire (1992). The neurologist Oliver Sacks called his ideas “a radically biological global evolutionary theory of mind”. An interesting example example of how Edelman’s major contributions to our understanding of consciousness have been extended is Giulio Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory, as discussed by Hedda Hassel Mørch in Issue 121. Tononi was a young member member of Edelman’s team of researchers back in the 1990s, and with Edelman co-authored Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagi‘conscious nation in 2000. Tononi’s AI ‘conscious machine’, engineered by “mimicking the natural selection by which the human brain was created” as Mørch says (p.15), is significantly reminiscent of Edelman’s team’s ‘neurally organised mobile adaptive device’ (NOMAD). Edelman also reminds us that “the conscious life [that science] describes will always remain richer than its description” ( Ibid ( Ibid , p.209). COLIN BROOKES, LEICESTERSHIRE DEAR EDITOR : The concept of panpsychism (Issue 121) has made me see that invoking the existence of a hitherto undetected-as-universal property to explain the unexplained can be extended to other mysteries. For instance, we are all too ready to believe that our DNA codes give
44 Philosophy Now December 2017/January 2018
us two legs and two arms. But why? Noone has ever shown in complete detail the biochemical processes by which this happens. Our acceptance of a DNA-based explanation is just another example of a misplaced reliance on physicalism. And in the absence of a complete physical explanation, the origin of our limbs remains unexplained and so should obviously be referred to as the hard problem of limbs. For a philosopher, however, this problem is simple to resolve. We need only postulate a panlimbist world. Specifically, the reason we humans normally have four limbs is that everything has four limbs, down to and including the smallest subatomic particle. Of course we might have to modify our definition of limbs a little bit, and also the meaning of the number 4, in view of the absence of anything actually like limbs forming part of mountains or oceans, or indeed electrons and protons. We can instead say that they have an inherent quality much like, say, mass or spin or the electro-weak force, which we we could simply name ‘limb’. ‘limb’. We We may then assert that this is fundamental to enabling us to have what we would normally describe as limbs – just like the assertion by panpsychists that the existence of consciousness in all matter, although not in a form that fits the definition of consciousness, is the source of human consciousness. Problem solved. NNECY , FRANCE P AUL BUCKINGHAM, A NNECY A Solace of Quantum DEAR EDITOR : Reading about the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics (deterministic (deterministic and probabilistic) in Issue 121 brought to mind the contrast between when we are experiencing ‘flow’ and when we are painfully self-aware. In flow it can feel that we lose consciousness and are merely acting through learned memories, completely absorbed and confident (deterministic). While selfconscious, however, our behaviour can feel and appear to ourselves and others as erratic, inconsistent, and unlike ourselves. When self-cons self-conscious ciousness ness is causin causing g us to ‘measure’ our performance against perceived expectations (that we believe we cannot meet), it seems that our behaviour changes compared with presenting to an empty room or when experiencing flow, therefore the outcome is more uncertain (so probabilistic), with a greater probability that we will appear ridiculous. W ILLIAMS ILLIAMS, MILTON K EYNES EYNES FELICITY W
Letters an obligation to do so.” I think Sally’s point of view and way forward – that she ‘intends to embrace [having a designer baby]’ and that the choice is both her ‘right’ and ‘obligation’ (both words originally italicized) – are unequivocal. EITH TIDMAN, M ARYLAND K EITH
In Praise of Brain Hats DEAR EDITOR : I am writing to tell you how much I enjoyed the cover photo on #121. The brain hats are so imaginative and inventive! I’m seriously considering how to make one for myself. It might be of some help when I am thinking about philosophical philosophical problems. Sometimes all you need is a little extra confidence. D. N. D IMMITT, L AWRENCE AWRENCE, K ANSAS Serious Baby Talk DEAR EDITOR : I would argue that Quinn Rivet, in commenting in Letters, Issue 121 on my dialog ‘Are Designer Babies Our Future?’ in Issue 119, is actually in the same camp as I. In the case of the exchange between my two acquaintances, Pat simply served as my dialog’s convenient foil in alluding to the putative downsides of genetic manipulation, especially of so-called ‘designer babies’. My position on genetic engineering engineering and designer babies should have been clear from the arguments presented by Sally in order to push back against Pat – arguments that I made stronger than Pat’s. For instance, the dialog opens with Sally saying, “I want to decide my baby’s traits. Genetic engineering is making that possible” and ends with her saying, even more forcefully, “I believe it’s just a matter of time. Eventually people will iron out the scientific, ethical, and social wrinkles, and be selecting their their babies’ preferred traits. What’s seen as acceptable will change dramatically over the next twenty or thirty years, and gene editing can’t be uninvented! Personally, I intend to embrace it as far as the means are available. I think not only do I have a right to give birth to a healthy, smart, capable, competitive child if I can, I have
2. The relationship between these symbols and reality is contested. They have no meaning except by reference to other symbols and are ultimately self-referential. 3. The mechanisms by which new patterns of symbols emerge are not understood. 4. There is no convergence between the patterns that emerge. 5. The relationship between these processes and the structure of their claimed target is not known. Er... Er... that’s it. Should I cancel my subscription? [ No. Why resort to merely symbolic gestures? gestures? – Ed ] ERNICK , E XETER , DEVON D AVID K ERNICK
Serious Misrepresentations DEAR EDITOR : I notice that Vincent di ntal Norcia refers to my book Environme book Environmental Philosophy: Philosophy: An Introducti Introduction on (Polity, 2015) in his review of Patrick Curry’s Ecologi Curry’s Ecological cal Ethics in Ethics in Issue 122 of Philoso phy Now. Now. I am of Philosophy grateful to Professor di Norcia for mentioning my book; however, I must point out that he has misrepresented my Poet’s Corner view on the issue issue of population population control. control. DEAR EDITOR : Interviewed in Issue 120, He claims that I argue that we must not Raymond Tallis mentioned his disagreement with D.H. Mellor’s notion that just limit limit populatio population n growth, growth, we must must time is a causal dimension of space-time. reduce our numbers to sustainable levels, and, in support of this claim, he refers the This got me to wondering: reader to p.54 and pp.144 ff pp.144 ff of of my book. were time to cease cease – Yet I argue argue no such thing. thing. On p.54, I would strings strings cease their singing? maintain that it would be appalling to spheres cease their song? K.O. S MITH, A SHEVILLE SHEVILLE, NC suggest we should welcome such events as droughts and famines, which reduce DEAR EDITOR : A haiku response to 118’s the global population of human beings. On pp.144 ff pp.144 ff , I do not argue that we must ‘Hens, Ducks & Human Rights in China’: reduce the global population of human China/West memo: beings; I suggest that rates of population ‘We’ is not a plural ‘I’. Hens and ducks talking. growth in some of the world’s poorer LASDAIR M LASGOW A LASDAIR M ACDONALD, G LASGOW countries could be reduced by such measures as alleviating poverty and Wittgenstein enacting social reforms to give women Numbers are better than words he said, more control over their lives. For numbers exist outside our heads. NIVERSITY SIMON J AMES, DURHAM U NIVERSITY But words are made up by you and me, DEAR EDITOR : Issue 122 of PN of PN has has just And do not exist exist in reality. reality. ALCON HEIGHTS, MN arrived, excellent as ever. I question, JEFFREY W W ALD, F ALCON however, whether the portrait purportedly of Michael Oakeshott (whom I DEAR EDITOR : From Russell’s Russell’s quote quote in knew) is really of Oakeshott and not of 120, “To be happy, one must first not be his colleague, Maurice Cranston, whom unhappy” I was inspired by a Rodgers I also knew. A quick check on the Interand Hart standard, and by Lord Byron: net shows the resemblance of the Glad To Be Unhappy portrait to Cranston. [ Ed.: You’re right, it is Cranston. Very sorry about that! ] Fools rush in, so here I am DR G EOFFREY THOMAS, FORMERLY Very glad to be be unhappy EOFFREY T I can’t win, but here I am RESEARCH RESEARCH FELLOW FELLOW , BIRKBECK COLLEGE, U NIVERSITY More than glad to be unhappy unhappy NIVERSITY OF LONDON Unrequited love’s a bore Philosophy as Pattern Recognition And I’ve got it pretty bad bad DEAR EDITOR : Knowing nothing about But for someone you adore philosophy, I was introduced to your It’s a pleasure to be sad journal some some eighteen months ago and I Like a straying baby lamb now feel in a position to offer an obser With no mammy and no pappy pappy vation on the nature of the the discipline: I’m so unhappy 1. Philosophy studies how patterns of But oh so glad! symbols interact to form new patterns. R AY SHERMAN, USA December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now 45
Books
Grant Sterling asks some immediate questions about Ultimate Questions , and Joh John n Green Greenban bank k asks if science
can ultimately tell us anything about artistic experience. So this is the great theme of Ultimate Questions: our ignorance is astoundingly vast.
Ultimate Questions by Bryan Magee Magee
BRYAN M AGEE’S U LTIMATE Questions (2016) is a thought-provoking and interesting book with some strong passages, but in the end we still have many questions, and fewer answers. Magee apparently apparently wishes to be known known as the great agnostic philosopher. The flavor of his agnosticism can be seen in this passage, which provides provides a good summary summary of this book: book: “The unknowable and unconceptualizable spill over into our empirical world. We live amongst them all the time. We are mysteries to ourselves, and to one another. In our sexual relationships the miraculous happens, and happens again in the creation of new life. We do not understand life or death. Nor do we understand time. . . ‘What is it about our empirical world that convinces you that there there must must be something something else?’ else?’ I am tempted to say, ‘Everything.’” (pp.56-7).
Magee repeatedly repeatedly emphasizes emphasizes this idea that reality is, or is likely to be, far greater and deeper than the physical world we perceive. For example, we know some moral truths; and morality, he thinks, cannot be reduced to a social convention. We perceive the th e physical world; and yet our own consciousness cannot be understood by what we know about the physical world. Music cannot be explained in words, and yet it offers insights into reality that words could never convey. We see other people, but what we know about them, how we understand them, and how we relate to them, is so much more than with the perception perception of other physical physical objects. objects. When we have sex, especially, especially, we can encounter something that is so much more than the physical interaction of two objects. Magee rejects all attempts attempts at reductionreductionism, and all attempts to confine reality to the boundaries of the empirical realm. After all, he argues, we happen to have five major senses, but we know that some other animals have fewer, and some have senses that we don’t have, such as echolocation in bats. So we know know that there are aspect aspectss of reality reality that that we cannot sense, sense, because because we don’t don’t have the 46 Philosophy Now
Unknowable Unknowables Having spent a great deal of time trying to show how reality spills over the boundaries of the natural world as studied by scientists, Magee turns to a discussion discussion of those philosophilosophers who attempt to solve the problem of the vast unknowability of it all. Ignorance, especially inescapable ignorance, is distressing, so it is no surprise that many people look for doctrines which avoid the possibility. One way to do this, which Magee primarily associates with Hegel’s idealism, would be to narrow the concept of ‘truth’ by holding that it is grounded in our consciousness. In this way, all the alleged unknowables would be swept away: ‘truths unknowable by humans’ would be, by definition, impossible – a self-contradiction. Magee rejects this position: no matter how comforting the idea that truth is what is knowable by humanity proper organs. Moreover, it is overwhelm- might be, there are simply no arguments that ingly likely that there are countless aspects of can prove that it’s true, and it is unacceptable reality that no living being can possibly expe- to believe in such a doctrine without proof. rience, because the necessary organs cannot A popular popular way to escape escape the the limits limits of our exist. This means that not only are there ignorance is to hold that we can have knowlcountless truths that we do not know, there edge about a supernatural realm. If we are entire realms of truth that we cannot even cannot eliminate the unknowables by
An interesting read, and a good antidote to modern tendency of people “thetowidespread naïvely assume that modern science knows all and sees all.
begin to conceptualize. Combine this with the fact that even what we do experience is only the tiniest fraction of what exists in the world world right now; and that the world right now represents only an instant in the history of a species that has existed for hundreds of thousands of years and that Magee confidently assumes is likely to continue to exist for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years, years, and the the sheer sheer volume volume of the the unknown unknown and unknowable should give us pause.
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reducing them to the physical or by restricting truth to what can be in our consciousness, then why not simply accept that the supernatural exists, and find a way to know it? And if our senses and consciousnesses consciousnesses are inadequate to know it, why not just accept that there is a being greater than us who can impart some knowledge of it to us – the most important parts, no doubt? In short, why not turn to religion? But Magee has the same view of religion that he has of Hegelian Book Reviews
Books could be a deity, just idealism: of course there could be as “it could also be true that my living room is full of silent, invisible, intangible monkeys” (p. 22); but there is no proof available for such a belief, and so this strategy must also be rejected. This, however, is the part of the book that most needs our attention. Magee repeatedly treats religious beliefs as if they’re all transparently nothing more than wish-fulfillment, so that there is no need to respond to them with arguments. He writes, “Religious discourse has this general characteristic. It is a form of unjustified evasion, a failure to face up to the reality of ignorance as our natural and inevitable starting point.” (p.31). This conclusion might be justified if it were supported with arguments; but here it is Magee who offers offers none. Certainly, though, this vision of religious thought does little justice to thoughtful writers such as Aquinas or Augustine. Ultimate Questions is an interesting read, and a good antidote to the widespread modern tendency of people to naïvely assume that modern science knows all and sees all – the sort of people who, like Horatio in Hamlet in Hamlet , refuse to allow that there may be more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in their empirical philosophies. But the book seems to merely assert the truth of inescapable agnosticism, rather than supporting the assertion. In any case the book is aptly titled: it does raise some of the ultimate questions, whatever the reader may think about the answers that are offered.
ture and paintings, or be uplifted by the sound of words and music? Beauty was a primary theme among ancient Hellenistic and Medieval philosophers, and was central to Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century thought, as represented in treatments by such diverse thinkers as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume and Burke in Britain, and by Baumgarten, Kant, Hegel and Schopenhauer in Germany. Alexander Baumgarten (1714-1762) thought that the senses had their own rules and their own perfection, differing from logical rules and the knowledge generated by logical thought-processing. The rules of perception were to be studied by a science of perception, which Baumgarten called aesthetics , from the Greek for ‘to sense/perceive’. sense/perceive’. In 1739 he claimed in §533 of his Metaphysica his Metaphysica that, “The science of this sensible knowledge and speaking is AESTHETICS (the logic of the lower cognitive faculty, the philosophy of the graces and the muses, a lower doctrine of knowledge, the art of thinking beautifully, the art of analogy to reason)” (my translation). This formulation leaves us with a mix of unassociated references: to science, logic, a ‘lower cognitive faculty’, philosophy, and to the ‘art of thinking beautifully’. ‘Logic’, in the tradition to which Baumgarten (and Kant) belonged, does not refer to a formal discipline, but to how a given mental faculty is to be exercised in the most efficient way – thus there can be a logic of sensibility. Such a logic must incorporate the findings of
psychology, which for Baumgarten was a discipline that investigates the depths of the soul, that is, the source of our representations or experience. Baumgarten seems thence to adopt the traditional idea of beauty as ‘unity in variety’. Kant, who greatly respected Baumgarten, failed to disentangle these aspects. Our sense of a breathtaking encounter is not like a process of rational thought, but is one of a significant disclosure, a sudden breaking-in to our awareness. We are inspired variously by feelings of devotion, gratitude, identification, admiration, joy, even of love. All such experience exemplifies Kant’s idea of imaginative ‘play’, perhaps to be interpreted as the human creative drive or creative response to the world. Even the more mundane aspects of our experience – form and balance, symmetry and completeness – are also component parts of aestheticism. And yet as a species we seem to take all this experience for granted; all as normal as breathing and sleeping. Art Under Science But now our aesthetic sensibilities are being brought under close ‘scientific’ scrutiny. Psychoanalysts, particularly Freud and Jung, delved into our deepest desires, and in doing so exposed unexpected psychological mechanisms and motives. However, these findings are being extended and transformed by cognitive science and neurology. Can its empirical findings be meaningfully related to aesthetic awareness? When science gets so
© DR GRANT STERLING 2017
Grant Sterling is a professor of Philosophy at Eastern Illinois University. University. • Ultimate Questions, Questions, Bryan Magee, Princeton, 2016, 144 pages, £14.95, ISBN: 0691170657
St Georges Georges Major At Dusk by Claude Monet, 1908
Aesthetics & The Sciences of Mi nd
Editors Currie, Kieran, Meskin, & Robson
THE NAT NATURE URE OF BEAU EAUTY is one of the most enduring and controversial themes in Western philosophy, philosophy, and along with the nature of art, is one of the two fundamental issues in aesthetics. Along with goodness, truth, and justice, beauty has traditionally been counted among the ultimate values. What would life be like if we we could could not respond to the beauty of sea and landscape, enjoy mindtransporting novels, admire great architecBook Reviews
December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now 47
Books involved, have aestheticians reason to feel discourse. In philosophy, reason or reflection uneasy? Philosophical thinking about alone is used for deriving the truth or falsity aesthetics has been tied to the idea that of propositions. Whilst language, letters, philosophy’s business is primarily to analyse words, truths, numbers, numbers, logic, and matheconcepts. This approach contrasts with the matics, all exist only in the mind, the primary methods of psychologists, sociologists, and source of scientific evidence is the senses.
even evolutionary theorists. How far should philosophers be responsive to the results of these studies? Should philosophers’ views on aesthetic values, interpretation, imagination, and the emotions of art, change in the light Aestheticss & The of scientific understanding? Aesthetic Sciences of Mind (2014) asks, “Are the traditional methods of philosophical aesthetics adequate, or should we supplement – even replace – them with some of the methods employed by the natural and social sciences?” Aesthetics and science have progressed as separate fields of study for at least three centuries, but there is an apparent danger that academic ambition (hubris?) is currently inspired inspired to bring everything everything into conformity with scientific methods. Neuroscience might be able to help to answer whether music and ballet are to be understood as providing essentially different types of aesthetic responses from, say, painting and sculpture, or whether the senses of hearing, seeing and touch provide aesthetically equivalent experiences. But does a scientifically experimentable entity such as a mirror neurone, or its activity, meaningfully match to anything described as ‘aesthetic’? For there to be any meaningful relationship between aesthetics and the sciences of mind, all terms and categories used in comparing ideas between them must be at least congruent – they must mean the same thing in both domains. Congruency also requires that any new knowledge found must be consistent with whatever old knowledge we want to retain. Scientific Scientific enquiry contrasts with that of philosophical 48 Philosophy Now
Music is perhaps the most universal art form. We can appreciate melody, rhythm, harmonic texture and dynamic contrast as separate but correlated attributes of a single experience. Together they function as a complex language – the foundational foundational ‘song without words’. From both a performer’s and a listener’s perspective, understanding of that language can certainly be deepened by increasing familiarity. After attending a concert we can discuss our experience with other listeners, sharing with them quite specific aspects of the performance, down even to the effect of individual passages. For this to be possible each person’s understanding must be first hand, at the level of personal disclosure; a direct, intimate experience, for which there can be no substitute. So is it even conceivable that we could account for – and so ‘explain’ – the arts in terms of measurable responses, and outcomes that can be summarised in charts and graphs? And can the impact of a work of art be reducible to its components? The Authors’ Artistic Experiences
The contributors to this wide-ranging book bring various points of view to the central issues. Dominic McIver Lopes sees social psychology as supporting the idea that reason plays no part in aesthetic judgement, and further, that post hoc rationalisations cause ‘distortion’ in that judgement. He implies (correctly) that it is not reasoning that provides aesthetic satisfaction, but he seems muddled as to whether critics can
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successfully successfully rationalise their own experience of artistic works. If aesthetic appreciation is at least partly a matter of sufficient correct perception, then a psychologist must determine both when correct perception has occurred, and that it is in fact sufficient to comprehend the piece. Few great works of art necessarily make their effect on first encounter, but over a period of exposure and reflection. Conversation Conversation between two viewers of, say, the same painting, can result in a deeper perception of aspects of the work for both, without there being any resort to rationalising explanation. This is despite Lopes’ assertion that appreciation of a Monet painting involves ‘being aware’ of the features that ‘make it beautiful’. This is almost to replace, say, a feeling of (aesthetic) happiness with an assessment of the reasons for being happy. In ‘Is Aesthetic Experience Possible?’, Sherri Irvin asks “what if it turns out that we don’t have introspective access to the processes by which our aesthetic responses are produced?” (p.37). Here again commentary on aesthetics is seen only at the level of post hoc rationalisation, rationalisation, as a scientific evaluation of artistic experience. But experiments on how consumers evaluate the quality of, say, soft drinks, hardly compare with experimentally analysing exposure to works of human creative achievement in painting, architecture or music. And one aspect of aesthetic analysis that is not evaluated in experiments is the transformative nature of the experience. How does it change us? A distinction is made between aesthetic experience and aesthetic appreciation, and a further distinction between mere appreciation and deep appreciation, involving, in the latter case, non-aesthetic components: “Deep aesthetic appreciation involves understanding understanding of how the artwork achieves its effects.” This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of aesthetic experience, for which no rational explanatory components are directly contributory. It also undermines Irvin’s strong appeal to mindfulness as relevant to responding to “aesthetically relevant features” (p49). David Davies’ ‘“This is Your Brain on Art”: What Can Philosophy of Art Learn from Neuroscience?’ repeats the old question of whether there is an aesthetic difference between a work of art and a forgery, and queries our responses to literary fiction, and the aesthetic significance of hearing old music performed on contemporary instruments. And can the intentions of an artist, a writer or a composer be frustrated by the unprepared reception of a work? PreparaBook Reviews
Books tion, by for example, reading up about a painting or a piece of music before experiencing it, only facilitates the essential aesthetic process or event: it does not contribute to the aesthetic experience itself.
balance; and what he calls default principles, such as elegance always being beautiful. But such aspects of beauty are not ‘components’ of art. Aesthetics is not atomistic. He’s mostly right that “empirical evidence cannot provide
So far as aesthetic response occurs or develops over time, rather than immediately and completely on initial exposure, any means of focusing attention on the artistic experience will be helpful; but this supplementary assistance is not ‘of one substance with’ the aesthetic experience itself. A fundamenta fundamentall difference difference between between the aesthetic and the scientific is that aesthetic phenomena should only be seen holistically – we cannot cannot reductively reductively analyse analyse a work of art art – whereas whereas science breaks phenomena phenomena up into elements that have significance in themselves. This means that what science science is looking looking for is quite different from what the art appreciator is looking for. So, whilst Davies explores the role of mirror neurons in response to fiction, he moderates his enthusiasm for experimental data by stating that “most of the significant philosophical issues cannot be resolved by appeal to this” (p.74). In ‘The Limits of Aesthetic Empiricism’, Fabian Dorsch refers to two kinds of aesthetic principle: conceptual principles, such as
The Way Forward? We can say that philosophy is concerned with ideas about ideas; science with ideas about things in the world and their relations; and aesthetics (along with ethics) with experienced emergent values. We need a procedure to record, classify Rembrandt self-portrait, 1660 and associate agreement in matters aesthetic: the ‘greatness’ of art, the ‘beauty’ any non-inferential justification for aesthetic of a landscape, the ‘power’ of a musical judgement judgements”, s”, but but wrong wrong about about there there being being a composition. composition. These may be given quantifiparallel between an aesthetic response and, able values through established procedures say, estimating the size of a crowd. of opinion polling and sampling. I propose In ‘Portrait of the Artist as an Aesthetic that we refer to any consensus achieved in Expert’, Christy Mag Uidhir and Cameron this process as ‘collective subjectivity’. Buckner try to reframe the aesthetic theory Though more extreme forms of art must of art (which refers to aesthetic features feature s of an remain closed off to more people, I suggest, artwork) by claiming that instead of the piece nevertheless, that a collective subjective of art holding any aesthetic quality in itself, evaluation can be used (with various degrees it attains the status of art by virtue of its of confidence) to make quantifiable value creation by an artist, who holds in mind an judgements that are more than simply ‘aesthetic concept’. So we have a new pairing, ephemeral matters of taste. not between “artworks and their aesthetic Might we now begin to answer Baumfeatures but instead between artists and their garten’s concerns? aesthetic concepts” (p.125). They also argue © JOHN GREENBANK 2017 that artists with training are more likely to John Green Greenbank bank grad graduate uatedd in Natura Naturall Sciences Sciences attain the status of ‘aesthetic experts’ and and English from Clare College, Cambridge, and have a better grasp of aesthetic concepts. The in Mathematics from the Open University, and outlook is naïve: “What kinds of training or is a trained concert singer. practice have expert artists received, and what role do do aesthetic aesthetic concepts play in their their • Aesthetics & The Sciences Eds Greg Sciences of Mind, Mind, Eds distinctive perceptual, motor, and concep- Currie, Matthew Kieran, Aaron Meskin, Jon Robson, tual abilities?” (p.130). Their conclusion puts OUP, 2014, 272 pages, £48 hb, ISBN: 0199669635
Book Reviews
the cart before the horse in demoting ‘aesthetic features’ of a work below a consideration of its production. Perhaps the most stimulating contribution is ‘Seeing with Feeling’, where Jesse Prinz approvingly quotes C.I. Lewis’s idea that “the beauty of the rose is its form and colour.” This is a phenomenological phenomenological viewpoint on beauty: beauty is not conceptual, but it can be seen. He considers such objections as the ‘Puzzle of Manifest Beauty’, whereby we do not (can not) register complexity phenomenologically. phenomenologically. His conclusion is that “Beauty is not there to be seen, but there in the seeing” (p.156). Other contributors to this book address relatively peripheral issues. So I would say that although there is no doubting the commitment and intellectual engagement exhibited throughout this book, the lack of secure critical foundations leads rather quickly to confusion and a deepening uncertainty, where explanations become too reductive, and what is important about the aesthetic experience gets explained away.
December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now 49
Film
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THE BIG LEBOWSKI
aybe, just maybe, the meaning of life is to live it: it : to leave the worries to one side and, as in The Big Lebowski , say, “F**k it… let’s go bowling” – or whatever whatever pointless activity takes your fancy. To assent to this idea, idea, it must be said, is not to assert that the philosophy of The Big Lebowski (1998) can be reduced to a single insight. Indeed, it is in the nature of the true work of art that it contains many, often contradictory, stands. This film is no exception. Still, it is above all a funny film, with a perfectly cast Jeff Bridges as the antihero Jeffrey Lebowski, who answers to ‘the Dude’, or “his Dudeness, Duder, or El Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.” The film is not a treatise on practical philosophy, but an exuberant display of cinematographic playfulness, showcasing the directors’ effortless comic genius. Nor is this just a chronicle of the unemployed Lebowski’s descent into the underworld of early 1990s Los Angeles due to a case of mistaken identity. It is also (and perhaps even more so) a cacophony of small and seemingly unrelated events woven into a tapestry of the sublime and the ridiculous. How many movies begin with the main character writing a cheque for 69 cents?
Matt Qvortrup contemplates Dude philosophy. The Big Lebowski might have lent itself to a lazy rehash of the postmodern theories of Jean Baudrillard, who wrote wrote about about “the end of meta-narratives,” or what he saw as the extinction in the late 20th century of any grand overarching ideas about plans or purposes for human life. To be sure there are elements of this in the movie, as is perhaps natural given that it was made at the time when America was confronting Saddam Hussein (who is irreverently referred to as “that camel f**ker in Iraq” by Walter Sobchak, a cantankerous Vietnam vet played by by John Goodman). Goodman). But overall, for those who watch this movie with a philosophical eye, it is almost breath-taking how many references there are to non-postmodern thought; how the characters almost go out of their way to insist on meta-narratives, on purposes. For example, reflecting on nihilism (a concept not much discussed in other Hollywood blockbusters), Walter – a convert to Judaism – dismisses this anticreed with characteristic bluntness: “Nihilists? F**k me! National Socialism… at least it’s an ethos.” And the self-same Walter notes that “this is not Nam, there are rules.” The Big Lebowski is not a movie based on the stringent logic of a René Descartes, still less one that portrays the
The Dude samples the good life
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ideals of the Enlightenment. But for directors Joel and Ethan Coen, The Big Lebowski was their first foray into Greco-Roman philosophy. They would later direct a remake of Homer’s Odysseus in the Deep South in Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), and recently Hail Caesar (2016). Coen Brothers movies often contain philosophical references. In Hail Caesar , there is even a cameo appearance by Herbert Marcuse, the German émigré Marxist Professor, who talks about “Ze dialectic” to George Clooney’s hapless and very impressionable character. But The Big Lebowski is (perhaps unwittingly) their most complete rehearsal of philosophical themes. The Big Stoic Is it just coincidental that Ethan Coen, who earned a BA in Philosophy at Princeton, endowed the Dude with such a strong dose of Socratic irony? If Socrates had lived in L.A. in the early 1990s, would he not have been a dude? A bearded, slightly overweight character, well-liked by his friends, a meditating ten-pin bowler with a resigned and irreverent attitude to life, he shares many of the characteristics of the Athenian sage portrayed in Plato’s earlier dialogues. And yet the Dude is not always a convincing Socrates. His philosophy is not that the unexamined life is not worth living, as Socrates famously asserted in Plato’s Apology. Rather, if this movie is anything philosophical, it is Stoic. Stoicism can be summed up as a philosophy of how to face adversity with equanimity. Founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the Third Century BC, Stoicism taught that to live the good life one has to understand the natural order of things; that what happens to you is often beyond your control, but you can control how you respond to it emotionally. Not merely a practical philosophy, the Stoics were also pioneers of a propositional logic which some commentators consider to be close to the logic of Gottlob Frege (1848-1925). But these considerations, as well as their dualist metaphysics, were but means to an end – to develop a philosophy of the good and contented life. Having been established in
The Dude’s No.9 dream
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Greece, where Epictetus further developed Stoic ). ). And what constitutes contentment it in the Second Century BC, Stoicism was for the Dude is summed up in the words given a more popular form by Roman “bowl, drive around, and the occasional acid philosophers including Seneca (4BC-65 flashback” – in other words to live in the AD) and Rome’s philosophising Emperor, present and to be content with his lot. In Marcus Aurelius Aurelius (121-180 AD). this, the Dude is the very personification of Like a good Stoic, the Dude is above all Seneca’s definition of ‘the wise man’, somecalm in the face of adversity. When two one who “is content with his lot, whatever it angry mobsters push his head into a toilet may be, without wishing for what he has bowl and demand “Where’s the money, not” ( Letters ). This is a man whose life Letters ). Lebowski?” he stoically responds, “It’s uh… centres around bowling; although he does it’s down there somewhere, let me take care a little about replacing a rug that “tied another look.” After the Dude has suffered the room together.” no end of misfortune, the narrator of the movie, ‘the Stranger’ – a Texan with a NietCore Dudeism zschian moustache – observes that life goes To claim that the Dude is a Stoic is clearly on, and that we can still look to him for open to criticism (as all philosophy should guidance: “Up and down, the Dude is out be!). Philosophical analogies are never there taking it easy for all us sinners.” ‘Us entirely accurate in works of art, and charsinners’ are caught up in a debilitating rat- acters in movies are by definition larger and race and would do better to emulate a lazy more multifaceted than the abstractions of man – “and the Dude certainly was that.” philosophy. It should also be noted that the “True happiness”, as Seneca observed, “is to film has given rise to a semi-religious philosenjoy the present, without anxious depen- ophy of a Daoist nature, often referred to as dence upon the future” ( Letters ( Letters From A Dudeism. Jeff Bridges even co-authored a book about the philosophy of the film The Stranger with the moustache (Bernie Glassman and Jeff Bridges, The Dude and the Zen Master , Master , 2014). But it is not the prerogative of the artist to interpret his work. It is for the spectator, not the actor, to draw lessons, find similarities, and take the longer view. All analysis can become uninspiring uninspiring if pushed too far. The beauty of art as a means of representing philosophical truths is that there are insights that can only be represented and understood in an artistic form; perceptions that somehow go beyond rational comprehension and scientific reductionism. While the sciences generally seek to break things down into their simplest parts,
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the humanities and the arts insist on the interplay of multiple perspectives, which can only be experienced through artistic expression. The cinematic arts are no exception. The Dude’s Stoicism is not of an abstract abstract nature, nor is it adhered to with unfailing consistency. Greatness means to be so large that there is room for contradictions. The Dude is – if pressed – capable of anger, though often in a resigned fashion: “You’re not wrong Walter, you’re just an a**hole!” And like Christ in the desert, the Dude is tempted to depart from his true inner beliefs. Egged on by Walter, he is lured by the promise of easy money; but in its pursuit he only finds himself at the mercy of nihilists and the occasional pornographer. According to the early Stoic Stoic Epictetus, “Philosophy does not promise to secure anything external for man, otherwise it would be admitting something that lies beyond its proper subject-matter. subject-matter. For as the material of the carpenter is wood and that of the statuary bronze, so the subject matter of the art of living is each person’s own life” (Discourses 1.15).
To be inspired inspired by and follow the Dude’s philosophy of life also does not promise to secure anything external. Finally bereft of both his friend Danny (played by Coen Bros. regular Steve Buscemi) and his beloved rug, the Dude returns to enjoying the quiet life of drinking White Russians in suburban L.A. and living in accordance with Walter’s final philosophical philosophical insight: insight: “F**k it Dude, let’s go bowling.” © DR MATT QVORTRUP 2017
Matt Qvortrup Qvortrup is a dude, dude, and Professor Professor of Politics at Coventry Coventry University. University.
December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now 51
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Death & The Philosopher
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have recently been rereading Thomas Nagel’s The View from Nowhere (1986). In the more than thirty years since its publication, the standing of this relatively slim volume has grown steadily. To borrow a metaphor that George Santayana applied to Spinoza, “like a mountain obscured at first by its foothills, he rises as he recedes.” Yet it is dispiriting how many contemporary intellectual trends – materialist theories of the mind and evolutionary epistemology to name only the most fatuous – have continued to flourish despite Nagel’s demonstration of their inadequacy. At the heart of The View from Nowhere is one of the key issues in philosophy, and, indeed, in our lives. It is that of reconciling our necessarily local, even parochial, subjective viewpoints with the objective standpoint whose most developed expression is science. science. How do we square – or even connect – the view from from within, according to which we are of overwhelming importance, with the view from without, which sees us as insignificant in a vast universe? Nagel pursues his response to this existential challenge, that “reality is not just objective reality” (p.87), with consummate skill, imagination, and much self-questioning. self-questioning. That great physicist and subtle philosopher Erwin Schrödinger anticipated some of Nagel’s preoccupations. In What is Life? (1944), Schrödinger pointed out that a “moderately satisfying picture of the world has only been reached at the high price of taking ourselves out of the picture, stepping back into the role of the non-concerned observer”, adding that “While the stuff from which our world picture is built is yielded exclusively from the sense organs as organs of the mind… yet the conscious mind itself remains a stranger within that construct, it has no living space in it” (p.119, in the 1967 edition). This gives rise to a paradox that although “all scientific knowledge is based on sense perception… the scientific views of natural processes formed in this way lack all sensual qualities and therefore cannot account for the latter. In the picture, or 54 Philosophy Now
Raymond Tallis on philosophical attitudes to non-being. model we form we usually forget about them” (p.163). In other words, if objective reality, and the world seen through the glass eye of mathematical physics, were really the full story, there would be no physics. There would be no world pictures, no ‘view from nowhere’, or indeed, from anywhere. The View From Now Not Here Even if we admit the irreducible reality of our subjective experiences of ourselves and of what is beyond ourselves, the tension between those experiences and the objective view remains. It becomes a source of anguish when we look at our lives from the Archimedean point of our own death. It is this to which Nagel devotes the final section of his masterpiece. He writes: “The ultimate subject-object gap is death. The objective standpoint simply cannot accommodate at its full subjective value the fact that everyone, oneself included, inevitably dies” (p.230).
Nothing could matter to us more than our death, which brings all possibilities to an end; and yet nothing, so far as the universe is concerned, could be less important. As Nagel puts it, “the vanishing of this individual [for example, your columnist] from this world is no more remarkable or important than his highly accidental appearance in it” (p.229). Indeed, according to Anaximander, in the first preserved written fragment of Western philosophy, philosophy, “Where things have their origin, they must also pass away according to necessity; necessit y; for they must pay the penalty and be judged for their injustice, according to the ordinance of time.” It is our lingering not our transience that is a scandal. This scandal is expressed in the modern acknowledgement that life, particularly the complex life of human beings, exists in defiance of the second law of thermodynamics. Philosophers have often been preoccupied with death. Acknowledging our finitude is the mark of Heidegger’s authentic being-towards-death. To consciousness, as being-towards-death. look at ourselves from the ultimate outside
December 2017/January 2018
of our non-existence may sometimes be curiously exhilarating. The darkness of death’s dateless (and dataless) night, the undifferentiated undifferentiated Nothing that awaits us – or rather, doesn’t even bother to await us – highlights, by contrast, the multi-layered richness of our ‘ordinary’ days. A glimpse of our objective insignificance enhances our awareness of the spaces, times, places, lights, and shades, the joys and sorrows, the ndimensional complexity, of the life and world we are living. And the very knowledge that reveals itself as minute and short-lived is itself deeply mysterious, being sustained by unfathomable networks of concepts. How did we wake out of ourselves sufficiently to see what (objectively) we are? The Deaths of Philosophers Looking back from death towards life can, alas, do little to ease the pain of bereavement. The richnes richnesss of a remembe remembered red shared shared life life only only exacerbates our sense of actual or impending loss. As for the miserable process of dying, philosophy seems to have little to offer. Of course, some philosophers have had exemplary deaths. Socrates’ courage as the hemlock worked its way through his body has left a 2,500 year contrail of inspiration. His final words “Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?” expressed his wish that Asclepius, the god of medicine, should be thanked for curing him of the disease of life. David Hume’s serene passing, beautifully recorded in a long letter from his friend Adam Smith, Smith, is even more more impres impressive, sive, given that his last days were troubled by “an habitual diarrhoea of a year’s standing.” While his life drained away in this most unbecoming fashion, and the very special ‘I am’ of David Hume was squeezed to extinction by the dysfunctioning ‘it is’ of his body, he received his friends, discussed philosophy, worried over the welfare of his family, and impressed all who met him with his dignity and courage. Even so, cultivating awareness of mortality and the habit of ‘living each day as if it were thy last’, last’, as the hymn exhorts exhorts us, tries to
overlook the actual process of dying – that time when, more than any other, “our flesh/ Surrounds us with its own decisions,” as Philip Larkin put it in his wonderful poem ‘Ignorance’. To retain the metaphysical purity of the idea of death, we naturally prefer to think of the process of our extinction as a simple, if total, cancellation; a painless, even featureless, passage from RT to not-RT. Some secular philosophers claim to find reassurance rather than a validation of our sense of tragedy in the thought that there will be no afterlife. Images of eternity may more often bring terror than consolation. Why fear fear being dead, the the Stoic philosopher Lucretius famously argued, since there is no-one to experience the state?: “Since death forestalls [grief and pain] and prevents any existence into which such misfortunes might otherwise crowd, we may be sure that we have nothing to fear in death, and that he who is no more cannot be wretched, and that there is not a scrap of difference to him if had never at any time been born, when once immortal death has stolen away mortal life.” (On the Nature of Things , translated by Cyril Bailey, 1910)
Our non-existence after death, Lucretius further asserts in an argument discussed by Nagel, is a mirror image of our non-existence before we were born, and the latter is hardly something we regret. I am not concerned, even less upset, by the fact that I was not around when Shakespeare was writing his
plays or dinosaurs were walking the earth. Unfortunately, this mirror image analogy does not hold up. In my pre-natal existence, I am not in a state of privation, because there is not yet anything or anyone to house my lack of being. Before I am born, I am only a general possibility, not an indi vidual to whom any subtraction subtraction – never mind the comprehensive subtraction of death – can be applied. My pre-natal, unlike like my post mortem, non-existence, is not the result of loss. Besides, if death does not matter, then nor do our lives. And among those things that do not matter must be included our relationships with each other, most importantly, love and friendship. Lucretius, it seems, forgets that death breaks off all our connections with those who mean most to us, and also that the world does not come to an end as our participation in it does. While each of us may adopt a non-tragic attitude to our own death, and to the general fact of mortality, tragedy is still alive in those we have left behind. While I will not miss myself after I have died, there will (I hope) be others who will miss me. After Death
If philosophers have sometimes guided us in the art of living, and have occasionally provided us with exemplars to inspire us in the art of dying, they have little to offer us outliving – on how to cope with on the art of outliving – the loss of others. Dr Johnson reflects on this in Rasselas in Rasselas (1759), (1759), the allegorical novel he wrote at high speed in a state of over-
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In short, why not accept that all good things must come to an end? Precisely not “sated with the banquet of because one is not “sated life”. Life is not a meal, and we who live are not mere vessels to be filled. Yes, there are some who are tired of life, and everyone may feel this sometimes. But which of us, facing the real and present prospect of extinction, will not suddenly become aware of its preciousness? Living the truth about ourselves is not easy. Or as Nagel put it with characteristic lucidity and concision, “The objective standpoint cannot be domesticated.” domesticated.”
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Raymond Tallis’ latest book, Of Time and Lamentation: Reflections on Transience is out now.
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“I’m trying to live each day as if it’s my last”
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Philosophy Then N O T F A R
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When Your Your Favorite avorite Philosopher is a Bigot on dams mson Peter Pete r Ada
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ard. forward. wa ys forw possible wa conside considerrs poss
e seem to be living in a time when people are willing to overlook bigotry. Donald Trump looks looks at a crowd of white suprema su premacists cists and an d sees the th e ‘very fine f ine people’ among them. Trump’s own sexist remarks provoke nothing worse than exasperated sighs among his supporters. Across Europe, the frank racism of far-right parties doesn’t stop people from voting for them as an expression of unhappiness with the government. No doubt genuine racism and sexism play a role here, but it also seems that people who would be horrified to be accused of prejudice themselves are willing to ignore or forgive prejudice in others. The intelligentsia tends to be outraged by this, but I wonder, are we really so much better? Or rather, I wonder, am I myself mysel f so much better? As a historian of philosophy, I devote much of my life to the careful and sympathetic exegesis of thinkers who were, almost to a man (and they were mostly men), outrageous bigots by today’s standards. Nearly everything Aristotle says about women consists of unfavorable comparisons to men. His ‘natural slave’ theory has been a historical bulwark of racism; and it was echoed two millenia later by Immanuel Kant, who was adamantly opposed to interracial marriage, and who claimed that “negroes cannot govern themselves, and can serve only as slaves.” The usual way philosophers philosophers have of dealing with this is akin to many Trump supporters’ attitude towards his misogyny: they don’t really approve of it, but also don’t think it matters so much. Similarily, the argument goes, Aristotle’s views on women or Kant’s ideas on race can be detached from the rest of their teachings, treated as a few unfortunate sentences in the midst of an otherwise valuable body of work. As historians, we usually take great pains to read various passages in light of one another; but here we do the reverse, engaging in a kind of interpretive quarantine by reading the rest of the book as if the (mercifully brief) wince-
inducing bits weren’t there at all. But is their bigotry so easy to contain? Let’s have a closer look at that idea of natural slavery. Aristotle actually doesn’t invoke the notion of ‘race’ at all. Instead he justifies his idea that there are people who are naturally slaves in part with reference to the impact of environment on people’s bodies. If you live in an imbalanced climate, this will have an effect on your intelligence and other traits, which is why the Greeks, who live in an ideally balanced zone, are uniquely capable of self-mastery. Climate is meanwhile influenced by the movement of the heavenly bodies. This conjunction of ideas appears in later authors, as when the Muslim thinker think er al-Kindi al-Kin di draws on the ancient astronomer Ptolemy to explain that people who live in a very hot climate – he explicitly mentions people with black skin and kinky hair – are characteristically characteristically dominated by wrath and desire, whereas people from further north are ‘strong thinkers’ and ethically moderate. Thus were the full resources of Aristotelian cosmology pressed into the service of something resembling modern racism. Can that really be irrele vant to our evaluation evalu ation of that t hat cosmology cosmol ogy and the motives underlying its invention? The historian histor ian may protest protes t that to be interested in Aristotle, al-Kindi, or Kant, is unlike voting for a politician: it need involve no approval of the author’s worldview. I’ve met many experts in Aristotelian cosmology, and not one of them has thought that the Sun orbits the Earth, as Aristotle did. So we might mig ht treat trea t the bi gotry of the past pas t the way we treat tre at the scie ntific mistakes mi stakes of the t he past. That is, rather than detaching hateful remarks from the rest of the theory, we detach ourselves, offering an objective anal ysis of these thinkers’ think ers’ ideas without withou t ever e ver adopting those ideas as our own. This will often involve situating the thinkers in their historical context. We might for example note – as a historical observation, not as a matter of praise or blame – that when Plato argued in the Republi the Republic that women can do c that
56 Philosophy Now Now December 2017/January 2018
everything men can do, but not so well, he was being unusually unusually ‘feminist’ for his time – while simultaneously being sexist by modern standards. This seems a reasonab reasonable le solution solution,, but but it will not not be enough enough for those philosoph philosophers ers who do not see themselves themselves as as ‘mere’ ‘mere’ historians, but seek truth in historical works. Most notorious notorious in this regard is the case of Heidegger. There is an ongoing debate as to whether his Nazism effectively poisons his thought as a whole, making it off limits l imits as a source of philosophical inspiration. Analogous threats also need nee d to be b e taken take n seriously by exegetes of other thinkers, and have been, to some extent: good work has been done on Kant and race, for example. Some contributions in this direction have used the ideas of historical thinkers to challenge those thinkers’ prejudices. Kant is an obvious example. The ethical demand of his ‘categorical imperative’ to treat other humans as having an irreducible dignity, has been an important source for ideas about equality and human rights; and Kant himself was critical of European imperialism. Likewise, one could note the poor fit between Aristotle’s commitment to the rationality of humans as a species, his assumption that nature broadly achieves its purposive aims, and his elitist, racist and sexist claims that the vast majority of humans are ar e incapable of the highest level of reasoning. The purpose of this ‘immanent critique’ by modern philosophers of their historical counterparts is not to catch out famous philosophers in self-contradiction. Rather, it is to acknowledge the ugly, even evil, aspects of historical writings while finding in those very writings the resources to challenge the bigotry of the past, and, more urgently, the present. © PROF. PETER ADAMSON 2017
Peter Adamson Adamson is the the author author of A of A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, Vols 1, 2 & 3, available from OUP. They’re based on Philosophy podcast. his popular History of Philosophy podcast.
The The Truth Kaya York tries to comprehend Everything. “In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it.” Jorge Luis Luis Borges, Borges, ‘On Rigor Rigor in Science’ Science’
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he night that Boonsri Amudee discovered The Truth she felt rather empty. After fervently writing down her basic insight until the early hours, she brewed a cup of sweet tea and watched the sun rise with no thoughts in her head. “I finished my tea,” she said in a later interview, “walked home, made normal love with my spouse, and dreamed about a featureless sphere.” Her findings were published five years later in the ten-thousand-plus page tome The Truth. The first draft had been incomprehensible, as alien to any reader as the landscape of the Moon. Amudee responded to this problem by releasing another book, book, How to Interpret Interpret ‘The Truth’ , alongside an additional sequel, How just for for good measure. to Interpret ‘How to Interpret “The Truth”’ just She left it at that, feeling that two levels of recursion were quite enough. (Although later, gradually, debates grew, even outside the usual literary circles, about how exactly to interpret How to
.) Interpret Interpret ‘How to to Interpret Interpret “The Truth”’ .) The Truth was found, found, drawn and quartered, quartered, subjected subjected to the the proper book-keeping, and available in the ‘T’ section of all major bookstores (the ‘ ค’ section in Thailand, of course, and so on: translation into other languages was less difficult than expected). The critical criti cal respon ses took years to emerge, emer ge, and are exemplified by William Jacobson’s brief review: “Yes, I th ink that about sums it up.” Once people could be persuaded to read the books, it was clear that the game was up. Philosophy departments shut down. The sciences sciences were were revised. Historians kept records records that sounded sounded increasingly like dream-journals. Postmodernists continued as before, unfettered by The Truth – not necessarily to their discredit. Theocrats banned the book. Televangelists protested the book’s existence despite (or because of) not having read it. Trappists Trappi sts remained remai ned silent. silen t. Buddhists Buddhi sts laughed. laugh ed. A few people created a church dedicated to the book. After telling them that such a church was unnecessary, Amudee herself was asked by the congregation to kindly sod off. When she appeared on talk shows, people asked her questions like, “Yes, but when writing this incredible book, did you get a sense of beauty?” She would
December 2017/January 2018 Philosophy Now 57
frown back and say things like, “I got a sense of neutrality.” Most politic p oliticians ians paid p aid li p service serv ice to t o The Truth and showed how their various positions were vindicated by it. A coalition of right-wing parties avoided the whole mess by publishing their own fifty-page book, titled The Alternative Truth. Truth . After the first assassination attempt on Amudee, she moved to an undisclosed rural location, unheard from again except for an occasional poem. The most understandab unders tandable le chapters chapte rs of The Truth were compiled into various abridgements. Those who read these books did seem to change over time in subtle, almost nondocumentable ways. Some developed a habit of looking at the ground as they walked so as to avoid stepping on insects. Others found themselves unsatisfied with The Truth. People complained online. One online poster wrote that reading The ( sic ) Truth seemed not to provide “any sort of deep, existential ( sic satisfaction.” “If this is the best Truth can give me,” another commentator wrote, “then screw it.” High school students were forced to read An Introduction To The Truth, Truth, and most found it tedious. The suicide rate didn’t go up; but it didn’t go down, either. In truth, most people just didn’t care to read it. Apocryphal stories arose that Amudee had withheld certain Truth. In these myths, devastating or beatific material from The Truth. commonly, the True, sexier version of The Truth would Truth would draw the reader inevitably to suicide, or enlightenment, or catatonia. These confident confident speculations speculations about about what what Amundee had left out of her book evolved into entire books of their own, eventually together selling more copies than The Truth itself. Indeed, far, far fewer read the original, unabridged book, as it was very abstract. The book’s final thousand pages, which were dedicated to issues arising from the book’s capacity to represent and account for itself, were, like much self-referential writing, barely readable. However, some chapters, particularly ‘Modera As Quipt In NAWIA’, ‘Ormahian Reactions In An Ideal Context’, and ‘The Real Reason That People Smile So Much When They’re Around Arou nd Each Other’, Other’ , were surprisin gly humane, and an d prone to set the careful reader into fits of cathartic laughter: a laughter of simultaneous discovery and recognition. The Truth had some practical effects. Technology improved – causing new problems, which technology then solved – causing new problems. Wars and bombings continued, with greater efficiency. Fashions changed. Art continued. James Bond movies were still produced, although people familiar enough with The Truth found themselves inexplicably embarrassed while watching them. Social inequality continued. continued. Amunde e was w as specul ated to be anything anythi ng from a Celest C elestial ial Being to the Antichrist – but only among those who had not read her books. Boonsri Amudee had been somewhat eccentric, but not particularly remarkable. She wasn’t a former spelling bee champion, a Macarthur Fellow, the recipient of any grant or prize. The daughter of Thai rubber tree farmers, she worked quietly as a statistical researcher at Kasetsart University, publishing the odd Philosophy of Mathematics paper in her free time. None of this seems to account for the book she is best known for. Mathematics only amounts to a fragment of The Truth. Truth. Amudee herself considered her sudden insight about 58
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The Truth in all al l its completenes comple tenesss and totality totali ty as a matter ma tter of “happening to be the right blip in the structured radio static of statistical aberration, aberration, the right words coming together, the right neurons happening to fire at the right time, to be a crest on Fortuna’s rigorous waves.” waves.” No one quite knew what she meant, but we nodded and scribbled it down.
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ive hundred years later, when the Earth was much wetter, aliens visited. The visit visit was pleasant, if awkward. The aliens aliens were presented with The Truth as a gift. They presented us with the same gift Truth. A superintelligent – their own civilization’s civilization’s version of The Truth. supercomputer was taken out of a basement (where it had been kept so as to cause no further trouble) to translate the alien version versi on of The Truth into human. It could not. A brief fight ensued, followed by tense silence. Then, before it was shut off by a much less intelligent computer, the superintelligent computer announced that it had found a way to translate the works into a common meta-langu meta- language, age, but that this metalanguage required the invention of 84.2 17 intermediary languages. The processing power necessary to produce these other languages would require employing the total energy capacities of human civilization plus those of the alien civilization. The matter hardly seemed worth it. Both civilizations decided that their own Truth was satisfying enough.
T
wo thousand years after this, a demon appeared on Earth. It was Japanese for some not very clear reason. The demon offered to grant a wish to Earthlings. Having already solved the problems of scarcity and mortality, the humans, ravens, and octopuses talked, and soon decided to ask the demon for a translation of the human, alien, and now raven and octopus, versions of The Truth into a universal language, understandable to all. The demon made a face that was the demon de mon equivalent equi valent of a smile, smile , and disappeared. disapp eared. There T here appeared in the sky a large book. It grew. It grew until the planets were pressed pre ssed between betwe en its pages page s like dried dri ed leaves. leave s. Earth would woul d have been the size of a period on the end of one of its sentences, except that the sentences remained normal font sized. To read one page would have taken centuries. The book grew g rew some more. m ore. Stars Sta rs burned small s mall holes hol es in its pages in final attacks of self-defense as it subsumed them. The book stretched to the size of the observable universe, possibly larger, before collapsing under its own weight. At first it turned into a giant star , the heat tearing its atoms atom s apart. Its collapse continued until the book that was the universe became a single point, infinitesimally small and infinitely dense. Some say that for 10 -43 seconds there was silence. Some say time did not exist at all. In either case, there was the silence, the point, the mysterious source of order in existence, and the ground of being itself. And then, another Big Bang! The universe again: another Earth, another sentient human life, anothe r Boonsri Amudee, another Truth, another contact, another demon. And infinitum. on and on it went, ad infinitum. © KAYA YORK 2017
Kaya York is a graduate student student in Philosophy and has taught English English and Western Culture in China. You can follow Kaya’s fiction at kayayork.wordpress.com
Professor Daniel Dennett
Visiting Professor of Philosophy at New College of the Humanities
MA Philosophy NCH London Distinguished postgraduate study led by extraordinary faculty faculty.. Why study Philosophy anywhere else?
nchlondon.ac.uk
