Liv asked:

What is Wittgenstein's argument against Augustine's picture of language and why did he pick on him and noone else? And is Wittgenstein's view of language noticeably more convincing than Augustine's?

I don't know whether this is a question that was given to you as part of your studies or whether it is your own question. In either case it is a bit of a "trick" question.

Paradoxically Wittgenstein "picked on" St. Augustine because, in the first place, he regarded him with the utmost respect, as one of the greatest thinkers (in the broadest sense) and writers that ever lived — and he loved to read all St. Augustine's writings, and did so throughout his life. Secondly he "picked on" him precisely because be believed Augustine had given a very clear and powerful expression of a picture of language that, in various other forms, is very widespread in almost all philosophical thinking and reflection, but which is a deeply misleading picture that results in all sorts of confusions and false or misleading theories in philosophy. Wittgenstein felt that if such a great man could hold such a problematic view of language then there must be something pretty important about it!

And this brings us to the point that really Wittgenstein was most definitely not just "picking" on Augustine "and no-one else"! In fact he was most certainly picking on himself and the philosophical theories that he had put forward more than twenty years earlier in the Tractatus, which were very similar to Augustine's conception of language. And also, for the same reason, he is really, but implicitly, arguing against the views of many other philosophers: from his contemporaries like Russell and the Logical Positivists right back to the ancient Greeks.

You will need to bear in mind that very few philosophers would admit to openly and simplistically believing in the "Augustinian picture of language" [very roughly that all words are names and that to know the thing referred to by a word is to know its meaning]. However Wittgenstein's point is that this "picture" is very deeply embedded in our thinking, almost subconscious one might say. It is a sort of magnetic pole towards which philosophical reflection and theorising tends to gravitate in all manner of subtle ways, and Wittgenstein believed that this tendency leads to misrepresentations and misunderstanding of how language works, and so to philosophical confusion and misguided theorising.

If you don't mind I am not going to do your homework for you and explain what Wittgenstein's arguments against it were, and whether or not his views are more convincing. His basic arguments against it and the alternatives he suggests are given in the early sections of the Philosophical Investigations, which I trust you will have read. But for a full account of Wittgenstein's thinking on these matters you would need to read much further, and I hope that you will. However in doing so bear in mind that Wittgenstein always sought to present the philosophical ideas that he was arguing against as forcefully and thoroughly as he possibly could — in order to get to the deepest crux of the problems. He liked to play his own Devil's advocate. On the other hand his own resolution of the problems is invariably presented only very briefly, or by way of mere "hints" and "pointers". He did not want to save people the trouble of thinking for themselves, indeed, he believed that only in this way, by fully "experiencing" the problems and finding their own resolutions, could anyone make any real progress in philosophy. That is no doubt true. But this single fact has probably lead to more misunderstanding of Wittgenstein than anything else: people very often thinking that what he is arguing against is what he is advocating! ... because he presents it so powerfully and thoroughly.

And these sort of misreadings are not just a problem for beginners and new-comers to Wittgenstein, but for some of the most famous and highly respected university professors! Indeed there is still quite a lot of controversy about exactly how to understand Wittgenstein's thinking on many of the issues and questions relating to language.

So good luck!

Rob de Villiers

Josh asked:

Over the past two years I have been contemplating my own philosophies about life and am going to write a 10 page english paper on them. Unfortunately, I have had a very hard time finding people who share my own philosophies so it makes it harder for me to learn more about them. My question is if anyone could tell me of any resources/authors that share my philosophies. Hear they are in a nutshell.

I don't believe in any spiritual bodies.

I believe in the evolution of man.

I believe the meaning of life is merely to survive and reproduce because otherwise you will die and your genes will no longer be around.

I believe good is what benefits that individuals/ groups survival and evil being the opposite. I believe we are no different than animals except we have evolved to reason better than all other animals.

If you can help to point me in the direction of others who have thought similarly it will allow me to learn much faster than if I had to figure everything out for myself.

Well Josh, from the evidence of your list, I don't figure on much of a chance of persuading you that there is not much philosophy in your beliefs; and I can't quite tell whether your beliefs are founded on hearsay or factual evidence. But I will assume the latter: I'll go on the assumption that you've read at least a dozen or so well-argued books on the pros and cons of each of these points and formulated (at least in your mind) some cogent arguments for them if ever you happen to be in company and called upon to defend them.

Having said this, however, I must take issue with you immediately on Point 4, "we reason better than animals". You must have written this in one hell of a hurry, for you cannot possibly be incognisant of the fact that we do not reason "better" than other animals. We just reason; animals do not. There is no basis for comparison.

And now that I come to think of it, I'm a bit uncomfortable with Point 1 as well. I don't believe in spiritual bodies either; in fact, I wonder if anyone in the world does. I've always thought that people who believed in ghosts and spirits, and God and Allah, thought of bodies as a species of things, and the spirit as a species of non-things. But I guess what you mean is, you don't believe in ghosts etc. Well, that makes two of us.

Point 2 also strikes me as dubiously expressed. You don't believe in ghosts, but you believe in evolution. I wonder if you've ever actually stopped to think what evolution "is"? Obviously not a thing, nor an occurrence: but what then is it? I might say, it's the same as stating, it's wet down here because it just rained. I could write a lovely 'scientific' thesis proving that every time it rains, something down here gets wet. Now you probably think I'm being frivolous, but if you did, you guessed wrongly. I'm dead serious. Evolution is not a thing to "believe in", because it is just an account of how the earth habitat changed as a result of living creatures occupying it, and how they in turn are changed as a result of changing the habitat. But I'll give you one reason why one can't "believe in it": there is no prognostication associated with it. Now this is a severe limitation. It's like saying, in my example from before, gosh, things get wet when it rains, why can't we figure out when the next rain shower is going to happen? Indeed: so why can't we figure out what kind of hominid is going to evolve from us? Because evolution is not an exact science, but a scientific biohistory of this planet. The big thing about it is nothing other than its explanatory power, which is a great deal more sophisticated than what religions used to dish up. But to say "I believe in evolution" is like saying, "I believe in Gibbon's Fall of the Roman Empire". Better to say: I believe that it accounts adequately for the existence of species on earth, and this is not, of course, compelling like the idea of a Creator God, but still a matter which is 'in principle' subject to verification by appropriate research, whereas a God is not.

Finally I should say a thing or two about your "belief in" reproduction and survival. You've actually got a case there, moreover it's just a fact that all living things reproduce in order to preserve their species. However, I now wish to ask you a counter question. Don't answer me, just think about it. The question is: why don't chessmen and lead soldiers and plastic ducks reproduce?

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Jane asked:

How could I get children (age 14 approx) to think about designing the ideal society?

I don't think you should try to do this or even want to. In history, attempted ideal societies have tended to be authoritarian, illiberal, restricting and inflexible. These characteristics actually seem to be inseparable from ideal societies and utopias because those who establish them obviously don't want them to change. But those same characteristics often explain to a great extent why so many ideal societies eventually fail because of the internal stresses and strains they generate. A major problem is always what do you do about all those people who do not like what you regard as ideal?

Much better is to inculcate in your children a healthy scepticism towards those people who claim to know what an ideal society should be.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't encourage your children always to try to improve the world. They certainly should. In his work on political philosophy, Sir Karl Popper advocated just this. When you see something wrong with society, try to fix it. But bear in mind that the actions you take to fix the problem may well produce unexpected new problems that you had never even thought of. Of course, you don't then give up. You try to fix the new problems, and so on. Society then progresses in this way through processes of trial and error. Hopefully it also improves but, as Popper said, there can never be any guarantees of improvement.

Popper called this sort of approach 'piecemeal social engineering' and it is really at one with his whole philosophy that all life is problem solving.

But it's like painting the Forth Bridge. The work never stops. And we shouldn't want it to because if it did stop — perhaps because it was thought that the ideal society had been achieved — there would nothing left for us to do. It would be like being in heaven. That sounds fine until you remember you can only be in heaven if you are dead.

John Sartoris

I will not concern myself with the question whether such a question is useful. But why not?

Just some ideas: THE ideal society doesn't exist. Every system of thought has its own ideals. You might think that for instance democracy is ideal. Why? It could very well be possible that in Eastern cultures this doesn't fit. So start with letting think children about THEIR ideal of society. But I guess that's what you mean. At the age of fourteen their creativity shouldn't be a problem. A bigger problem is usually your own value system. Try not to judge. Children often have problems constructing a system. So why not add promising ideas to a virtual society (let them decide what is promising).

Henk Tuten

Well, there's always science fiction... Ursula LeGuin has several books on this theme... you might try her Lathe of Heaven. John Brunner The Stone that Never Came Down, and maybe, if they're bright kids, Stand on Zanzibar. There is always Wells' Time Machine... and so forth. All in all, I'd take a look into the sci-fi literature; there's lots of utopian speculations there, and some of it is combined with good adventure also.

Steven Ravett Brown

Of course you will start letting the kids put down any ideas of what they think a good society should look like. This would be the first round of this game. The second would be to look for contradicting goals in this list. Perhaps put the list on the blackboard in front of them in the classroom and let them debate and see. To learn that some goals are contradicting is a great step to deeper insight.

Then let them discuss different ideas of what is "good". I always call Plato's Republic a "brilliant nonsense", because it's a brilliant analysis of our concepts of "justice", but misses the important fact that human togetherness is not only justice. I compare this to the different concepts of "good eating" underlying the advice of the gourmet and the advice of the doctor: The gourmet speaks of "grand cuisine", while the doctor speaks of vitamins and minerals and calories etc. In this sense you may have the kids compare the life of a playboy or playgirl on a palm-beech ("The Bacardi World") against the life of a monk or nun in a cloister after vowing "poverty, chastity, and obedience" to the prior. While completely different both forms of life and togetherness are decent, sensible and "good" in a specific way.

Next let them see the difference between utopian totalitarian designs as in Huxley's Brave New World or as in Fascism and Stalinism and in the Taliban regime etc. as compared to interpersonal relations in the New Testament or in "humanistic psychology" (Maslow, Rogers, Fromm etc.) concentrating on "mutual love and understanding" without any "grand design" of society. What makes the difference? Here is a hint:

The socialist model of society failed, the Christian model of society failed likewise, and so did the liberal model. Why? Because all three models presupposed a very unrealistic model of human behaviour.

People are cowards, they are lazy, they are greedy, they are envious, they are vile, they are stupid, they are stubborn, they are arrogant, they are self-opinionated, they are vain, they are craving for power, they are sadistic, they are weak, they are forgetful but unforgiving, they are whimsical and capricious, they are lecherous and hypocrites, they are sensuous and voluptuous, they are thoughtless, gullible, and superstitious, and they sometimes even are mad and beset by mad ideas and fears and irreal hopes etc. And all this you have to take into account when building "an ideal society".

You cannot build a society on the concept of a "Christian" or a "socialist" or a "liberal" personality. That's nonsense. Those people are very rare indeed like geniuses and saints. It was not only the idea of a socialist society that was questionable. The real cause of failure was the misunderstanding that people could be selfless and caring and behave responsible all of a sudden. If you are a member of the "nomenklatura" in a communist state, you are not the "representative of the workers" anymore, but you are the member of the nomenklatura in the first line. You adapt to the requirements of this nomenklatura and to the specific craving for power and the specific greediness, vileness and self-righteousness of this nomenklatura. But of course you would never admit it. Thus the whole construct of "representing the working class" becomes a great lie and self-deceit of the members of the "socialist elites". And if you are paid a meager but at the same time assured and equal income by socialist standards, indifferent of your abilities or industriousness or inventiveness, you eventually stop being industrious and inventive and start being lazy and indifferent. And this you start not only because of resignation, but also because of being hassled by the more lazy and indifferent people around you. You cannot expect many achievers in a society that in fact calls achieving an unnatural and inhumane and "un-social" behaviour. Likewise there are many liberal lies and self-deceits on the real goings of a liberal society like in the USA or elsewhere. And of course there are many lies and self-deceits on the real goings of a Christian or an Islamic society defended by the true believers against all evidence.

All this is quite natural and "human". A good society is one that tries to be honest to experience, that tries to avoid the self-deceit, be it socialist or Christian or Islamic or liberal or whatever. Sounds very simple, but is very hard, because most people prefer false dreams. To be slim you should eat less fat and sugar an do sports and walking. But people prefer to eat fat and sugar and then pay dear for wonder-pills and wonder-exercises to get their weight down. This too is quite natural and "human". The problem is not to pay for the poor and the jobless and the elderly, the problem is that people don't like to do what is needed. They prefer to wail over all sorts of "crises of the welfare state". This is exactly like wailing over too much weight: Serious experts know what to do, but since it's annoying their advice is not asked for and so the quacks do the show.

And then there is this other and even deeper problem: The problem of perfectionism. Most well meaning people, when starting to design a "good society", set up a list of all evils as are smoking, drinking, "immoral behaviour" etc., and then simply call it item for item "forbidden" or "unnatural" etc.. Thus no smoking, no drinking, no "immoral behaviour" etc. anymore. They simply don't understand the difference between robots and living humans. Eating cake all the time surely is not good, but sometimes eating cake is very good. Fighting, running and achieving all the time surely is not good, but sometimes fighting, running and achieving in a contest is very good. But those schematic people designing a better world don't get it. Since they are principled fools they want clear decisions: X should be either bad or good, but not sometimes bad and sometimes good. But most things in life are good or bad only in some measure or under certain circumstances and not once and for all and under all conditions. Simpleminded persons get confused by this, while it's only common sense. This too is "being honest to experience".

Thus let all things as they are? No! There are real fools and evil persons around whose thoughts and deeds should not be tolerated. In a certain way, the Giuliani (the former mayor of New York city) principle of "zero tolerance" against trespassers of the law is not bad. But this does not include strictures in the form of a totalitarian regime like that of the Taliban or of some Christian fundamentalists as in the Geneva of Calvin.

There is an essential and clear difference to be seen: The "zero tolerance" principle is a defensive principle, not an oppressive or positively coercive one. It does not tell people what to do, it only tells them what NOT to do. It says in effect "Keep out of my home and garden, no trespassing here — but I don't care what you do otherwise." Thus "zero tolerance" only means "drawing the line". And by this the principle of "zero tolerance" lacks the moral arrogance of all true believers that try to impose their moral convictions on other people. True believers are zealots that don't like to learn and to listen, but that only want all others to have to learn and to listen. This is not the position of defenders of "zero tolerance", who are liberals.

And it's not the position of defenders of the Golden Rule either: The Golden Rule says "As you would like to have others do onto you, so do yourself onto others!" But this is not enforcing the behaviour of the others but your own behaviour. If you want people to be nice and helping, you first start to be nice and helping yourself and not shouting people around what to do and how to behave.

And then: According to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle "the good" is desired just for being good, like sweets are desired by the kids just for being sweet. Thus to make the good look good and attractive you have to advertize and to demonstrate it's quality, not to force people into some "good behaviour". You have to sell the better quality on the marketplace. But this is imposed on you, the seller, it's not enforcing the buyers to buy. You may be tempted to ban some "bad goods" from the market — but you should not. You may denounce what you think is bad, but let the customers decide for themselves. This is the way of an open and learning society. Criticize and advertize — but don't patronize or matronize, and don't compel.

Thus it is not quite impossible to bring some clarity into this debate on a good society. Even teenies should get an idea of the dangers of "designing the ideal society" by this and should become very cautious. But at the same time they should be encouraged: There really is much that can be done to improve human togetherness. That too they should learn by thinking it over.

Hubertus Fremerey

Cindy asked:

What are the premises and conclusions for J.L. Mackie's subjectivity of values in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong?

Can you give an analysis of his arguments?

Mackie gives a number of arguments against moral realism in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. The one im going to talk about is the 'queerness' argument. The basic idea is that Mackie wants to show that moral properties are somehow metaphysically queer, in that they are quite unlike any other kind of properties that exist and hence there existence should be rejected. The argument goes as follows:

1. If moral properties are real then they have to be objective
2. If moral properties are real then they have to be subjective
3. If moral properties are real then they have to be both subjective and objective
4. It's not the case that any property is both objective and subjective
5. Therefore, it's not the case that moral properties are real

Mackie gives support to (1) because Mackie thinks that moral properties would have to be primary properties in a Lockean sense (i.e the same kind as shape) in order to make them really objective. (2) is supported because Mackie thinks that moral properties would also have to be like secondary qualities (like colour and taste) in order to be so closely tied to subjective states in an individual. Such a property (both a primary and a secondary) would, according to Mackie, be hopelessly queer.

People have responded to Mackie in a number of ways but ill mention just one. John McDowell (in his "Values and Secondary Qualities") has responded by saying that what's really wrong with Mackie's argument is his conception of the primary/ secondary property divide. McDowell argues that if we think about moral properties on a secondary quality model then we can generate enough objectivity for us all to be happy with. The basic divide is that Mackie takes it that secondary properties can't be objective, whereas McDowell thinks they can. McDowell thinks that secondary properties can be viewed dispositionally (i.e. x is red if and only if a standard observer in standard conditions would judge x is red) and that this can generate a level of objectivity that is sufficient for a genuine moral realism. Whether McDowell is correct is another matter (for the record, I don't think so) and im deliberately cutting this short because I could talk about this for a long time. Feel free to email me with any follow ups....

Rich Woodward

Trevor asked:

In the sport of sailing, we have an appeal procedure run by the Royal Yachting Association. I am the chairman of the Appeals Committee. We have a rule in racing that an entry to a race can be rejected or cancelled providing the organizers 'state the reason for doing so'. We are debating the question as to whether a reason has to be reasonable. Can you help?

As I understand the 'issue' here, it seems to me that you are wondering what criteria should be in place to determine if a reason counts as a good' or acceptable reason. On the surface, it seems like a reason for rejecting an entry could be just about anything. The rule in place only says that a reason must be given and does not stipulate the content of the reason. So, we might imagine for argument's sake that a reason plainly stated like, 'We dislike green-eyed people, and prohibit them from racing,' could be offered to cancel an entry. Yet such a reason might be considered 'unreasonable' as it is arbitrary. When offered this reason we can ask the question, 'Why?' Indeed, how would one explain why? 'Well, these people are disagreeable and nobody likes them.' But, why? 'They have green eyes.' But why is that disagreeable? 'It is simply how we feel.' But why is that grounds for rejecting an entry? 'Because it is how we feel.' But, why is that grounds for rejection (and not anything else)? 'It is — because we say so.' Arbitrary reasons have the character of being unjustifiable they cannot withstand testing (why questions). Often, they are justified ultimately on the very lacking grounds of 'just because.'

Acceptable, non-arbitrary reasons have some justification. These reasons are 'reasonable' in the very least, they provide us with grounds for a real debate. For instance, we might imagine that an entry is rejected for the reason that the crew members are all seven years old, and the association prohibits such an entry. The association gives the reason that unsupervised minors are not permitted to enter races. When asked why this is so, the association may claim that such a situation represents a safety hazard. When asked why, the association may make reference to the risks involved in the sport and that minors cannot legally assume these risks. Now, there might be an argument about the merits of these particular seven year-olds involved, or the legality involved, but, ultimately, the association has provided a non-arbitrary reason for its decision.

The issue then is whether or not the Royal Yachting Association wishes to deny entries for races with arbitrary reasons or with justifiable reasons. A private club or association might be within its rights to utilize arbitrary reasons for rejecting applications, but then would face fairly reasonable criticism, perhaps even legal action for discrimination (unjustified bias against the green-eyed, for example). It seems to me that although the language of the charter is vague and open to this sort of interpretation, it is hard to imagine that anyone in your association would want to act upon this sort of interpretation. It would be best to assume that the reasons the association should provide must be non-arbitrary and justifiable (or, as you put it, reasonable reasons).

Maureen Eckert

I think you will find that in the rather loose way in which rules like these are framed, the intention is to put off an applicant in the nicest (and most logical) way, and in this respect the demand is certainly for a 'reasonable' excuse. In essence, of course, it is wholly arbitrary. A committee like your's represents an interest group, and part of your duty is to preserve and protect those interests (providing they are within the applicable laws). For instance, it would probably not be considered a reasonable rebuff to an applicant to point to his/ her hairstyle and/ or manner of dress — yet if the rules demand of all applicant to have crew cuts and to wear a blue and white outfit, then that 'unreasonable' criterion becomes suddenly eminently reasonable. In most committee work of this kind (at least those of which I have had experience), a 'reasonable reason' is usually required for most decisions which reject an application; though in these as in most cases, it is the majority opinion which prevails in the judgement of what is 'reasonable' under the circumstances. I suppose you're aware that every now and then a court may overturn one of these 'reasonable' decisions; but this tends to happen more often in the 'serious' avenues of life, e.g. schools or highly competitive sporting environments.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

I'm going to take it that you really are who you say you are... which means you are a) serious about this, and b) reasonably sophisticated in human relationships. Now, clearly "reasonable" doesn't merely mean "have a reason", since that could be anything, and very well might be. So I do think that you have to set some standard, or establish a procedure for setting standards. As I see it you have several choices.

First, you can set up some meta-rule to this effect: "a reason shall be deemed valid by a majority vote of the rules committee; there will be one opportunity to appeal a negative ruling within one month [or whatever] and the ruling from that appeal is final". That's one possibility... reasonable is what a majority says is reasonable. Period. Why not? You must have thought of that, surely.

Second, you could do the same as the above, basically, and let the chairman have the final say, or the tie-breaking (if you can have ties) say. I'm in favor of this one, for the reason that the captain of a ship has the final say, and you are then modeling the committee after a ship. A workable model, it seems to me, given the nature of your club.

Third, you could take a look at legal definitions of "reasonable". That isn't my field; I have no idea as to what they might be; but I cannot believe that some lawyer on your committee or in the club could not find such a definition. Then use that as the definition for your committee.

Well that's it for my ideas... I don't see any point here in going on about different ethical systems, etc. Arbitrary as it sounds, I'm in favor of the second alternative for your club. Anyway, I hope this helps.

Steven Ravett Brown

It depends on your aims. It is our whim or we don't like you are reasons. But they are not reasonable in the sense of being fair — and fairness is to be expected by an Appeals Committee just because such a body is expected to act reasonably or there would be no way of appealing with any sort of case. And I expect it is your aim to be held in regard.

Rachel Browne

Jim asked:

Is it possible that when we die we could be re-incarnated back to the time we were born and live our own life over and over again, regardless of the ribbon of time?

Anything is possible, Jim, anything at all. Consider that there is an INFINITY "out there", of which we know probably not even a millionth of a percent.

On the other hand, there are a few things which we do know. And from those few things which we can positively assert to be possible, probable or likely, irrespective of what kind of secrets may be lurking in that gargantuan realm of the INFINITE, we can say that reincarnation, as in your question, is out of the question.

This is not to say that in the space of all possible, probable or likely occurrences in the INFINITE universe, you and reincarnation are present and accounted for, even though perhaps in no other state that the thought you had. I think you meant your question to be taken literally, however, and that's why I positively answered it in the negative. Now if you are wondering, why I captalised INFINITY, it was as a reminder that if the world/ universe/ God etc are really infinite, then questions like yours (and probably most of the questions we put to the world/universe/God) are just the toys of our mind. Because being FINITE, we cannot know anything at all about the INFINITE. We can only know what prevails in our local FINITE segment; and this implies that, for all intents and purposes, the INFINITE universe beyond the tiny little bubble of our local system does not exist.

You see the problem, I hope? For anything to be possible that is actually impossible, you require an infinite range of possibilities. But infinite possibilities can only occur in an infinite system. And ours is not, it's a finite system. Therefore impossibilities cannot occur in our system.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

The thought that you have expressed, the idea of an 'eternal recurrence' was first formulated by the Greek Stoics, and was later taken up by Nietzsche:

The greatest stress. How, if some day or night a demon were to sneak after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you, 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything immeasurably small or great in your life must return to you — all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over, and you with it, a dust grain of dust.' Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?

F. Nietzsche Thus Spake Zarathustra Part One, 101

Leaving aside the question whether this information ought to make us gnash our teeth, or, on the contrary, ought to reassure us that our existence has some 'weight' to it (see the opening of Milan Kundera's novel The Unbearable LIghtness of Being) Nietzsche's hypothesis bothers me for two reasons.

First, I don't see why I have to think of 'the next GK who comes around' after the history of the universe has repeated itself as being me. Suppose the demon had whispered that reality consists of an infinite three-dimensional array, each compartment containing an identical universe. Surely, there would not be any temptation to think that the GK in one of the compartments next to this one, or the compartment after that, is myself. No, it is someone like in every respect. The next GK along is writing these very words, just as I write them, is thinking the very same thoughts as I am thinking and so on. But that does not make us one and the same individual.

That does not necessarily take away from the sublimity of the idea of an infinite recurrence or repetition, whether taken in a temporal or a spatial sense.

However, the analogy with the spatial array ought to make us stop and think whether we really understand what is meant by the idea of infinitely many identical universes, whether extended in time or stretched out in space. By hypothesis, there could be no 'travel' to the next universe along, nor could any empirical observation count in support of either hypothesis. Every possible observation and experience, for now and for evermore, will be the same whether the universe is infinitely repeated or not.

Kiernon asked:

When do infants know about objects?

This is an extremely difficult question to answer, because of a problem with the term "object". Just what is an object? A block of wood? A circle against a background? One's own hand? A splotch of color? A sound? Something that stays the same when it disappears behind something else? There is a sense in which infants are aware of objects several weeks before they are born. But that is a very primitive sense, which is constantly being refined. I simply cannot answer your question without more specification. Check out these for a very sparse introduction:

 Cowan, N., J.S. Saults, L.D. Nugent, and E.M. Elliott. "The Microanalysis of Memory Span and Its Development in Childhood." International Journal of Psychology 34, no. 516 (1999): 353-358.
 Gopnik, A., and A. Meltzoff. "The Development of Categorization in the Second Year and Its Relation to Other Cognitive and Linguistic Developments." Child Development 58 (1987): 1523-1531.
 Gopnik, A., and D.M. Sobel. "Detecting Blickets: How Young Children Use Information About Novel Causal Powers in Categorization and Induction." Child Development 71, no. 5 (2000): 1205-1222.
 Piaget, J. The Construction of Reality in the Child. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Ballantine Books, Inc., 1971.
 Piaget, J. The Grasp of Consciousness. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978.
 Stern, D. N. The Interpersonal World of the Infant. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1985.
 Zheng, M., and S. Goldin-Meadow. "Thought before Language: How Deaf and Hearing Children Express Motion Events across Cultures." Cognition 85 (2002): 145-175.

Steven Ravett Brown

Marlys asked:

I am having a hard time finding any good arguments for and against fatalism. I would like to believe that we all have free will, but I have not been able to find much information on these topics. I am also finding it hard to research if agency exists. Any help on these issues would be helpful.

I understand fatalism as the theory that whatever anyone, including you, does, what is fated to happen will happen. In other words, human beings are impotent to change the future and so that the future is just like the past in that respect. As Doris Day sang in the film Don't Eat the Daisies, "Che Sera, Sera, whatever will be, will be...."

What that implies is that if your instructor or teacher tells you that you must hand in a term paper, and that unless you do so, you will fail the course, then, if you are a Fatalist you will argue as follows:

"Whether or not I pass or fail the course is already fated. Che Sera, Sera. So, what is the point of bothering to write and hand in the term paper? None at all.

If you think that this argument is correct then you think Fatalism is correct. But if you disagree with this argument, you disagree with Fatalism.

It is because of this that the Stoics called a version of Fatalism in their time, "The Lazy Man's Sophism" (A Sophism is a plausible, but ultimately fallacious, reasoning.)

Ken Stern

It seems that there are two possible views you can take about the future. We'll stick with the example of the term paper. On the first view, the statement 'I will pass the course' has a truth value, just like any other statement, e.g. 'I spent three nights in a row writing my term paper', 'I am now printing out my term paper'. A statement just is the kind of thing that is true or false.

One philosopher who was worried about this view was Aristotle. He proposed an alternative theory (Aristotle De Interpretatione E.M. Edghill trans. in The Philosophy of Time Gale, R. ed. Macmillan 1968 pp. 179—182) which has come to be know as the 'open future'. At this moment in time, the future result pass or fail is not a fact. It is not decided. You can think of the universe branching out into two possible futures, the future where you pass and the future where you fail, which are equally real. What you do now will make all the difference.

It is possible to hold the first view — we can call this the 'closed future' — without accepting the validity of the lazy sophism. From the point of this more reflective fatalism, the fallacy in the lazy sophism consists in taking one view of what I am able to decide now, and another view of the future. The future is already fixed. We know that. But so is the present. That's what the lazy sophism misses. The correct conclusion to draw is that if the future is closed, then what we think of as 'making a decision' isn't what we take it to be. In other words, you can't say to yourself, 'I will write the paper...but what's the point? whether I pass or fail is already decided', because it is also 'already decided' whether or not you will write the paper. Deciding is something that happens, and like anything else that happens it has a causal effect on future outcomes.

I have no interest in defending fatalism. But nor am I convinced that Aristotle's 'open future' is the only alternative. A third, more subtle possibilty is that we say, about something that might happen in the future, 'If X will happen then it is true now that X will happen', the words "it is true now that" add nothing to the content of the statement. I might as well say, "If X will happen then ba ba ba ba ba X will happen". If we remove the 'babble', then "If X will happen then X will happen" is just an tautology, an instance of "If P then P". And nothing of consequence can follow from a tautology.

Geoffrey Klempner

Ricardo asked:

Sweis asked:

I am beginning my studies in philosophy of mind. However, I have a question I feel might be considered stupid by my fellow students and professors: How does the software of a computer make the hardware move? The question is of course connected to the ever bothersome mind-body problem started by Descartes. I read your answers to Dualism and others, but my question is on the computer connection.

These types of question, Sweis, have been around for ages and yet we don't ever seem to get any closer to a resolution. But there is an absolutely fundamental fallacy here, namely in just putting it the way you have, as a presupposition that "a computer moves things". I suppose thousands, maybe millions of people share in this fallacy; they are confused because science tells them this-and-that about the supposed powers of computers and we are all supposed to believe it because of the prestige associated with science. Let me therefore point out the fallacy for you, and maybe you'll then feel motivated to spread the word a little. Just try and answer these few questions, but try and see through the pattern of them:

1. When a ball rolls down a slope, who/what moves the ball?
2. When a tile falls off a roof and kills a passer-bye, who/what killed that person?
3. When you go to sleep at night, who/what puts you to sleep?
4. When you move your writing hand, who/ what pushes the pen?
5. When you drive a car, who/what drives the car?
6. When a computer issues printing code to a printer, who/what instructs the printer?

Now questions 1-2 are answerable, though not to everyone's complete satisfaction, for it depends on whichever scientific theory is current at the moment to account for concepts like 'impetus', 'force', 'attraction' etc. But in any case, if you said "gravity" for the first and "chance" for the second, the likelihood of it standing up in a judicial court is pretty good. With No. 3 you have to command some fairly precise knowledge of physiology, but again an answer is readily attainable. But with No. 4 we move into a different realm, one where the concept of 'volition' enters the picture. Let's leave aside any question of whether it is the soul or the psyche or the mind that is ultimately responsible; for by whatever name you label the faculty responsible for the movement, the answer to No. 4 is not, of course, "my hand", but "I". The cartesian dilemma can be said to have been resolved to the extent that there is no longer cause for us to abide by his mind/ matter distinction; for although we have not come to a solution of where or how the pulse originates which moves the hand, yet its source is the "I", which generates a stream of electrochemical energy through the appropriate neuronal pathways, which are in turn converted by the motor cortex into a signalling bundle that triggers the desired muscular functions.

Now here you have an answer to No. 4, which gives you both the 'mechanical' features and the 'mental' features of the arrangement involved in the movement, namely that there is an "I" (however constituted) which initiates, a series of functions which obey, and the medium by which the intentions are communicated and in the same pass translated into action. Basically, you have the answer to No. 5 as well now; and I only threw in this question as a stepping stone to the unveiling of the above mentioned fallacy. Evidently it is not the motor which drives the car, although in everyday parlance we often speak as though this were the case. Nor is it your foot on the accelerator with your hands on the steering wheel, but once again, indubitably, the "I".

And indubitably, it is again the same "I" which issues code to the printer and instructs it. For both a printer and a computer are 100% dead matter, which is built and programmed by human. Accordingly the only thing a computer or a printer can "do" is to roll down an incline (if it's on wheels) or fall off a balcony and kill a passer-by, as the objects of questions No. 1 and 2. The seemingly 'intelligent' actions they perform, however, are not 'actions' at all — they are in the strictest sense of the word actions performed by humans, for whom the computer acts as a proxy. For it is always and exactly the same agency, a human mind, which instructs your hand to move the pen, your foot to push the gas pedal and the computer to generate the code to activate a printer. Now I should add something important here. There can be no pretence that we know exactly how the mind generates the stream of electrochemical energy which runs down your nerve strands to make certain muscles twitch. But we know exactly, down to the finest detail, how analogous action occurs in a computer and printer. And we know this for a very obvious reason: because a human mind designed this piece of machinery to work just as it does. Therefore, as I said, the ultimate cause of printer action is a human mind. — The ultimate cause of a human mind? Well, for that we're still looking!

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Try thinking of it this way: there is a kind of illusion that "software" is the program you see on paper or what you type in on the screen. But those are the means of symbolizing and inputting software. Software actually is magnetically stored in the computer, and the magnetized areas in RAM affect electrical currents flowing through the silicon. You could (and the earliest computers did) use magnetic tape just like cassette tapes. So you don't have anything different, on that level, from an electric motor or a thermostat. What the RAM does is enable you to direct the electrical flows very precisely, in very complex patterns, which alter other magnetic areas, which direct other electrical flows, over and over until you finally get impulses directed to your screen or hard drive or whatever. You could just as well feel puzzled over how the tape in your tape player (if you still have one) causes the speakers to make sounds.

So how is this connected to the mind-body problem? A good question. You think computers have minds? Why on earth should you think that, except that we've been told over and over that this is the case? I'll let you in on a secret... they don't. Which is not to say that you can't get mind from matter. That is a totally, completely different question. And the conflation of those two questions has led to some enormous problems in several fields today.

You might look up the "hard problem" on the web... but carefully... this is a very nasty area in philosophy.

Steven Ravett Brown

As a former engineer I worked a lot on the software-side of computers. The most 'hard' thing I ever did (in the first year of my study) was translating normal software in 'Assembler'. Now Assembler is a kind of software very close to the hardware. The hardware is designed in such a way that it understands commands in a 2 cipher-system (compositions of 0's and 1's). Its logic is a dual logic. Consider a zero as NO and a one as YES. Assembler now translates smarter software in series consisting of only 0's and 1's.

Back to your question. On the highest level there is smart software (close to language). This is translated in a few steps to basic software. The last basic software is Assembler. So the final result is a command like 0001011100110000011111. That shape of command originally used to be punched in cards. The cards where used to steer a machine. In the machine there was a unit that felt the holes in the cards, and translated them to machine instructions.

Henk Tuten

Sofia asked:

"If X might exist but we have no reason to suppose that it actually does exist, then as metaphysicians we should not concern ourselves with X." Is this true? Why or why not?

Good question. I'd say that the sentence is false. David Chalmers recently wrote a book on the nature of consciousness. In that book he spends much time talking about 'zombies'. A zombie is a creature who is physically identical to you but lacks your conscious experience. Now, Chalmers would probably say that there is little reason to suppose that the actual world has zombie inhabitants. But that fact that zombies could exist tells us some interesting things about metaphysical nature of consciousness (i.e. that consciousness cant be a purely physical thing because something can be physically identical to you be lack all conscious experience). So, zombies might exist, they don't actually exist, but the argument goes that the fact that they exist in some possible, but non-actual, world means that they can still tell the metaphysician some very interesting (and controversial!) things about the nature of mind. The interesting thing is that when metaphysicians talk about things that might exist but don't actually exist, they usually means that there exists a possible world and at that world that thing does exist. The nature of possible worlds is of course a matter of great controversy. I wrote a couple of answers about them in the past so you might want to look there. Feel free to email me with any questions....

Hope that helped.

Rich Woodward

Sara asked:

What are 'customs' and 'traditions'?

In what sense can any of our present day customs and traditions be traced back to Europe in the Middle Ages?

Customs are habitual practices of a community or people. But a tradition is a body of principles having an immutable normative validity and a metaphysical character. The tradition receives everything which is in accordance with its unalterable unchanging norm. It rejects and ignores everything that is irrelevant or contrary to the norm.

You ask whether 'our' present day customs and traditions can be traced back to Europe in Middle Ages. What do you mean by 'our'? Whatever your answer may be, the fact is that many of the world's customs and traditions could be traced back to Europe in the Middle Ages. For example, Freemasonry's various customs and tradition derive from the craft organizations of the medieval European free-stone masons.

Jean Nakos

Francis asked:

Can you prove that God does not exist?

A good question! I am so used to tackling the argument for God's existence that this has rather caught me on the back foot.

First, taking the two questions side by side: "Does God exist? — "Does God not exist? — It might appear on the surface that both questions are in the same category, and that each argument could be commenced at the same point, but this is not the case. Perhaps philosophers like A J Ayer might say that you are asking the wrong question. He might say that, like the unicorn, you have invented something simply to prove that it does not exist. He would insist that the position is: Now that you have posited a God, prove his existence.

Taking on this question could mean taking the arguments for God's existence and simply saying that such arguments are invalid. For example, many who claim that God exists use the argument from 'order in nature,' those opposed would simply have to say that there are other explanations for order in nature, which could be backed up by scientific argument. Evolution could press its claim to be simply a series of fortuitous accidents. All religious writings could simply be dismissed as mythology and illusion. In fact, all we would have to do is sit back and claim that science will eventually come up with an answer. There is no need to build up an image of God simply to knock it down. The onus is on the believers to prove that there is a God.

My conclusion is that to answer your question would involve us in an interminable search for proof of an argument which lacks a positive, authentic, basis to start with. The question is in a very different category to — 'Does Mount Everest not exist?' It falls within the same category as, — 'Do unicorns not exist?' Though believers would say that there is more supportable evidence for God than there is for unicorns.

John Brandon

Robert asked:

To what extent does Nietzsche's philosophy deserve to be tainted with Nazism?

You may not realise it, but this is a LOADED question! And although there are several ways of handling it, I will suggest something to you which is always a good way of defusing it: before asking it in just these terms, be sure that you have at least a working acquaintance with Nietzsche's philosophy and ditto with Nazi ideology. For if that's the case, then you might find that any relationship between Nietzsche and Nazism is a matter of third parties, invariably with vested interests, making that connection, which does not in any genuine sense exist. I would go even further and assert that the more you become acquainted with his writings, the less similarity you will find. Mind you, there are causes why the 'taint' arose; but again this is neither Nietzsche's doing nor indeed that of the Nazis themselves, whose 'leading lights' (if you wanted to call them that) would hardly ever be caught reading a philosopher! And on the other side, although he's not around to confirm my opinion, I think Nietzsche himself would have recoiled in horror at the election of the Nazi Party, let alone their doings once they held the reins of power.

But I owe you at least a hint of an account, why people keep sniffing around Nietzsche to find if the odour of proto-Nazism, which once was believed to be clinging to him, is still there. Essentially they are two. Firstly, there is a certain amount of 'incendiary' writing in his work, and some of it is couched in language that can easily be bent to suit an ideology if that happens to be your intention. So certain phrases like "I philosophise with a hammer", "blonde beast", "Uebermensch", "herd mentality", "master race" and so on got stripped of their philosophical vestments and thrust into a sub-intellectual political milieu where they could hardly stand up as the concepts they were in their own environment, but got turned into slogans. But you must surely have heard that Nietzsche felt himself to be an apostle of the aristocracy of mankind; and now try and match that attitude to beer hall speeches, the Nuremberg rally, Hitler Youth and so on: the very "canaille" he never tired of raging against. And yet he was fulminating against Germany when there was 'Kultur' there, with a capital "K". I think Nazism would have exceeded his capacity to believe in its very possibility. However, there is another reason, equally important. Nietzsche had the misfortune that a totally unscrupulous sister 'looked after' his posthumous fame, who outlived him by decades and spent most of that time 'editing' his letters and manuscripts by painstaking forgery of his handwriting. In particular she was concerned that posterity would not read those letters of his where he told her 'home truths' of the most unpleasant kind, including her political affiliations and her antisemitism. With Hitler, by the way, she got on like a house on fire.

But the worst 'service' she rendered her dead brother was to publish his projected book, The Will to Power. This book was throughout the early decades of the 20th century regarded as his chef d'oeuvre. You should be aware that Nietzsche is not responsible for its contents; for although many of the words and sentences are his, their arrangement is a wilful distortion and the best thing to do (as editors have done ever since the 1950s) is to ignore its existence and read the aphorisms in the higgledy-piggledy order in which they were written. In a word, the book is a forgery, a concoction of paragraphs in a sequence calculated to rouse a certain impression that does not reflect Nietzsche's intentions (what little we know of them). Who among scholars could have known this during the years of the fascist hegemony? They didn't and accepted the book as what it purported to be. But we, today, who know better, should of course draw the consequence and let the 'Nazi case' dies its natural death. In a way the continued hankering after it is becoming a manner of refusing to look into his philosophy and find ourselves depicted as in a horrid distorting mirror! Nietzsche was a prophet; and as you know, they're always a prickly lot. My feeling is that it would be much more useful to pursue the question, why and how did Nietzsche become such an easy prey to bowdlerisation, and not just by the Nazis? But let me end as I began: there is no case; and to prove this you need do no more than read his works. If in addition you can spare the time to read into Nazi ideology, you will only strengthen the case. But I for one doubt it is worth the effort. Nietzsche was a great philosopher, and in itself this is incompatible with Nazism. Accordingly I think it is high time we stop looking for things he didn't say and affiliations he didn't foster and start paying attention to the things he did say.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Selina asked:

Do I exist...more generally, do we exist? If so, how can we possibly prove this, in accordance to everything around us that supposedly exists as well?

Do you exist? Well, I'll tell you what... you tell me what you mean by "exist" and I'll answer your question. How about that?

What does it even mean to ask that question? Doesn't your asking it imply some sort of existence? If not, why not? If you can question your existence and you don't exist, then who's asking? Who is asking whom? What are you doing?

Or maybe you're just trying to puzzle the "philosophers" here? Hey, whatever. But I, or anyone else here, is not going to give you a better answer than to ask you how it is you can ask that, or any other question, if you don't "exist" in the first place, in some sense of that term.

Steven Ravett Brown

Chrissy asked:

Are verbal contracts binding?

In English Law oral contracts are generally binding. The exceptions are contracts for the sale of land and contracts for the assignments of debts. These have to be written.

Of course, the difficulty with an oral contract, if you want to sue on it, is proving in Court that it exists and what its terms are.

John Sartoris

In English law, all contracts are binding and have legal force insofar as they create legal responsibilities, generate rights and obligations and allow for recourse to the legal system if responsibilities and are not met. There are cases when contracts are not binding, such as when a contract has been entered into under duress or there has been misrepresentation.

A contract is defined in terms of offer, agreement and consideration. A verbal contract is not just a promise to do something. It is an essential element to the existence of a contract that both parties intend to become legally bound. The parties must also have legal capacity and excluded categories are persons of unsound mind, drunkards and minors. My contract books don't mention drug addicts, but I suppose they would be classified as of unsound mind.

Consideration is the reason for the enforcement of a promise. The law obviously cannot uphold all promises. You might think that a promise made by parties with the intent to become legally bound would be sufficient for a contract, but it is the consideration that allows the court to know how to assess the nature of the compensation. Consideration is vital. 'A valuable consideration, in the sense of the law, may consist either in some right, interest, profit, or benefit accruing to the one party, or some forbearance, detriment, loss or responsibility, given, suffered or undertaken by the other' (A Casebook on Contract by Smith Thomas quoting Currie and Misa). Contract law in England, by the way, is case law rather than statutory law which means that the law is determined by rulings in particular cases by the courts rather than parliamentary statute. Case law can be quite funny (amusing!). It has been ruled that consideration need not be adequate but must be sufficient (or real). Smith notes that if I make a promise to you for supplying three chocolate wrappers which are quite useless and you were going to throw them away anyway, this would be perfectly good consideration because of the rule that the court will not enquire into the adequacy of the consideration so long as it is real. Even though you were going to throw the chocolate wrappers away anyway, you have parted with something you might have kept so this is considered 'detrimental' in accordance with the definition of consideration according to the courts!

But although it is a general rule that the courts of England don't require that a contract is written to make it valid, there are exceptions such as in the sale of land or where this is determined by statute.

Rachel Browne

Yes they are. Trouble is, they may be hard to prove. As Samuel Goldwyn (the great film producer) once said, "Verbal contracts aren't worth the paper they are written on."

Ken Stern

Sarah asked:

What can be said about the claim that happiness is simply pleasure?

Sarah also asked:

What is a virtue? What virtues do we need in order to live a good life?

Over the centuries many philosophers have written about happiness being nothing deeper than a sense of pleasure, the absence of pain, uninvolvement in serious affairs etc. Among the Greeks, Epicurus is foremost; among the Chinese Yang Chu has written some beautiful stories and prose sketches on the subject (I for one far prefer these to the dour Epicurus, who seems to me almost hysterically concerned with his menu, health, fears and other worries: Yang Chu is more interested in fine clothes, food, entertaining in style and philosophising on death — in a gentle and happy sort of way). Among more modern philosophers, Schopenhauer has written a gravely beautiful book on the subject, called Aphorisms on The Good Life; and Santayana might be regarded as to some degree belonging into the same bracket, although he is much more aristocratic and cultivates a prose style that is almost too beautiful for philosophy. An example is his book Scepticism and Animal Faith, full of good humour, gentle sarcasm and much wisdom. As an example of what he is on about: he believes that even an atheist should continue to abide by the Roman Catholic Liturgy, because it is ... well, stately, grand, festive, full of innocent pleasure and promise and, yes, beautiful. But you know: these are mostly the work of elderly thinkers, who've seen much and probably suffered a lot. How much their recommendations may mean to a young person I cannot assess. But if this is how you feel, you could do worse than at least dip into their books.

Your question about virtue, on the other hand, no-one could possible pretend to answer in one paragraph. One might recommend you start with Plato, but which book? I'm inclined to say: all of them. Reading Plato is one of the best ways of killing time known to mankind, so my recommendation is not frivolously intended. The trouble with virtue is, unfortunately, that in our Christian society, it is inevitably bound up with specifically Christian virtues; and accordingly a great deal of what has been written on the subject is tinged with religious/ moral issues. In Rome, where the word originated, 'vir' had quite a different slant on it, cf. "virility", one of its derivatives. And speaking of Plato and his cohort, their word was "arete", which is better translated as "excellence" and carries a semantic of 'social excellence'. So you need to pick your favoured notion of virtue; for there simply isn't just one single meaning to this word.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Oscar asked:

If the reality of the just passed moment is gone, and the reality of the just to be moment, it seems that the only reality is this instant, (and that is gone as we think). Is it possible then that time is not a real dimension rather just a derivative of what we assume when we measure events that are happening or the duration it takes us to traverse a measured distance? Is then distance not the same since both time and distance are measured as derivatives of each other. Just as well, isn't that true for velocity (and the velocity of light).

When we think of it, we believe in the future based on what experiences we had in the past and a projection of what will be in the future. That expectation is what can be referred to as "faith" but there is nothing but statistical collection of past occurrences to lead us to believe an event in the future will ever happen. This question takes us into the realm of things we call constants such as speed of light, gravity, mass, and other "things" we use to measure each other with respect to each other. I think these definitions are derivatives of each other and therefore subject to setting of false and conflicting baselines with self-fulfilling proofs.

Well first of all, the reality of the present isn't an instant... the psychological, experienced present extends into the past through brief and fading memories (retentions), and into the future through equally brief expectations (protentions). Husserl wrote about this quite extensively (Husserl, E. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time. Edited by R. Bernet. Vol. IV, Edmund Husserl: Collected Works. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990.). Next... yes, it's quite possible that time is not a "real" dimension... Kant wrote on that (e.g., Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by W.S.T. Pluhar. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1996.). We impose, according to him, structure on a reality which we can never directly experience, and our experience of time is part of what we impose on reality... where "impose" does not mean that we create anything external... the imposing we do is in our interpretation of whatever is "out there" which we cannot experience as it "really" is. I'm using all the quotes to emphasize aspects of my little explanation here which are almost totally inadequate, inasmuch as they barely touch on what Kant actually said. But what you're saying about measurement and light is not what underlies this little problem we have with reality. Once you accept measurement, duration, length, you're locked in to the position, basically.

No, that expectation is not "faith", in the usual sense of the word. It is an assumption, or a set of them, that we make, and if you want a thoroughly skeptical take on that one, read David Hume (Dialogues). Also, you need to take a look at a basic book on statistics; you're using that word incorrectly. A "statistical collection" is a kind of sample, and that's not what expectations based on past occurrences are, or are based on... at least, not as you're using the term. Now, as far as your last sentence... no, I'm afraid you're simply wrong here. The question of the interdependence or circularity of these physical dimensions and measurements, has, believe it or not, occurred to others. And great care is taken to avoid this kind of circularity. If you have been taught otherwise, you have been taught incorrectly.

There are a couple of things you need to get clear here. First, you're asking interesting and profound questions. That's good. Second, you are assuming that no one else has asked them, or that the people who have are not very bright. That's bad. Why don't you try another perspective, and assume that those people were as smart as you... maybe sometimes even smarter, and that they put some thought into these issues? And go find what they said about them. I think that you'll be pleasantly surprised, after you begin to understand what they've said... which, actually, is in many cases quite difficult to grasp without a lot of background. Start with the Hume; that's pretty easy and direct, and go from there. Kant, in fact, was at least in part responding to Hume.

Steven Ravett Brown

Yu asked:

Let me ask a question about Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.

Which is stronger, the claim that T is incomplete or the claim that T is undecidable?

Strictly speaking, this is a mathematical and/ or logical issue. But philosophically it is undoubtedly the second, undecidability, which is the stronger or more important outcome. You will recall that Hilbert's programme (like that of Whitehead and Russell) was for a leak-proof set of axioms; that it failed was a minor catastrophe for mathematics, for it showed by the paradoxical means of a rigorous proof that certain logical problem are inherently insoluble (undecidable); and you probably also know that since then Gregory Chaitin has shown with his elephantine 'Diophantine equation' that the whole notion of a rigorous arithmetic can be dissolved in a game of pure chance. For philosophy this is a blessing insofar as the core notion of human agency, which is always under threat when people start tinkering with human substitutes, is thereby placed back in the driver's seat. As Kroneker used to say, "God invented the whole numbers; everything else is the work of man."

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

John asked:

Is eating people wrong? Why?

Yes. Kant had the answer to this one: it is immoral to treat a person as an object. If you eat someone, that's what you're doing. Now, there is an interesting variant on this, however. One could conceive of ritual cannibalism, where one eats the dead to show respect for them to symbolically join with them by taking them into oneself, as moral, because then you're treating them as people, not as food. The ritual cannibalism (yes, "communion") of the Catholic Church is something like this. Is that kind of cannibalism moral? I'm not sure, but it seems that it could be, with suitable respect for the dead. But aside from that kind of cannibalism, using a person as food is denying their humanity.

But, you say, what if you're on a desert island, a ship lost at sea, or whatever, and you and some others are starving... and someone dies. Is it moral to eat them? I'd say yes, myself... I'd want to be eaten in those circumstances, anyway, if it was me that died first. What's the difference between that and, say, donating your organs after you die to medicine, to save lives?

Now there's another kind of cannibalism which I have not really thought through as to its morality, and that's where human beings might clone their own flesh to feed themselves, in some future where food is scarce. Is eating cloned human meat, grown in a vat a) cannibalism, b) immoral? After all, that's nearly what we do now with chickens, commercially. Does it make a difference what the meat is, genetically? My take on this is that it's only our cultural conditioning which makes us feel that this is repulsive and immoral, and that there's not any real immorality there; humans are not treated as objects or as food; there's just meat with human genes. On the other hand, taking human genes and employing them in this fashion, it might be argued, is using the human blueprint, at least, in a way that denigrates it and that opens the door to real abuses. That's certainly a reasonable response, and that's why I don't know the answer to this one... I don't have what I'd consider a decisive reply to it. Which isn't to say there isn't one... maybe there isn't; or perhaps I just haven't thought of it yet.

Anyway, you can see that this is a rather nasty but interesting issue... and quite relevant to today's world, wouldn't you say?

Steven Ravett Brown

My own view that eating people is wrong is based on the idea that it is revolting. It is a human body. This is eating someone: A person. Much as I like people alive, dead bodies have little appeal. My attitude is the same when it comes to meat. Those who eat meat, seem to just think of it as meat. To me it is the flesh of a dead animal, a being, and the longer I have been a vegetarian, the more it seems unhygienic to have dead flesh in the kitchen. It seems perverse to prefer to eat a dead animal to a pizza.

Most people in cities wouldn't eat meat if they had to kill it, skin it and take out the innards and cut it up and cook it. (Of course, the innards are a delicacy, so once taken out, must be put in the fridge for a special occasion). If the animal was a pet, people would have a deeper aversion to eating it. They would especially have an aversion to the killing element.

But a more moderate stance on why eating a person is wrong is because we have ethical relations human beings. Our attitude to humans is different from our attitude to animals. As Raimond Gaita says in The Philosopher's Dog, no-one 'would respond to someone who served up infants in the way they do to someone who serves up animal flesh'. People have a special place in our lives, as do pets. Our respect for persons is shown in the way we bury or cremate them with a religious ceremony. Our respect for pets is beginning to match this. The mass slaughter of animals in England that came with the outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease came with no such ceremony. We even have different words: killing and slaughter. Slaughter implies a brutality that is inappropriate between human beings and is only used in the context of war. Our brutality towards animals is something we find acceptable. We do not find it acceptable when it involves humans.

But even if you were to eat a person who died naturally, would you serve the person at a dinner party?

Rachel Browne

Diego asked:

Are all genuine problems scientific? what is left for philosophers to do in a post modern age?

A counter-question: are ANY genuine problems scientific? Once astrophysicists have nailed down the Higgs Field, what's left for them to talk about? — Let me give you a hint you might like to ponder. At this moment, a war is being fought in Iraq. Many people throughout the world disagree with the decision of the US government to wage this war. Is this a problem? Surely it is! But what's it got to do with science?

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Well, your first question itself raises a genuine a problem which does not appear to be scientific. It's clearly not physics or chemistry or anything like that, is it?

It seems likely that only a philosophical answer could deliver a satisfactory response your question. It therefore answers itself to an extent.

It is a point that is often missed that when people say things like "the only important truths are scientific truths" they are not making a scientific statement but a philosophical one.

Such statements are sometimes said to be "pragmatically inconsistent" — i.e their assertion is inconsistent with their being true.

John Sartoris

Espie asked:

What does it mean to say that there is a contingent identity between mental states and brain states?

Larry asked:

Are Works of Art in the mind?

Yes. And to prove this to yourself (and/or to your friends), imagine there were no minds. Where do you suppose a Martian visitor might find a work of art on earth? Whereas if a Martian happened to land today and enquired about the "Night Watch" or the "Moonlight Sonata", you could reply, "they are embodied tokens of something we create with and in our minds; and we put something into these tokens, some clues which our minds pick up, but which do not belong to the objects as objects, and that's why you, as a Martian (they have electron plasma brains) can't see it."

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Bruce asked:

I have become fascinated by paradoxes, almost all philosophical arguments seem to end there! I wonder if anybody out there can suggest some reading matter.

Try Paradoxes from A to Z by Michael Clark Reader in Philosophy at Nottingham University (Routledge 2002).

John Sartoris

How about Paradoxes From A to Z by Michael Clark, and W.V. Quine's, The Ways of Paradox?

Ken Stern

Pete asked:

How could one embrace ethical egoism without also embracing psychological egoism?

Ethical Egoism is an ethical theory that claims that actions are right insofar as they promote a person's own self interest. Under this theory, if one acts out of altruism (does something solely for the sake of another person), this action is wrong. Psychological Egoism is a theory of moral psychology (a theory of mind with respect to actions). It claims that all of our motivations for action are reducible to self-interest. According to this theory, although people might claim to be acting out of altruism, they are mistaken. Their so-called 'altruism' is actually an instance of self-interest. For example, the Psychological Egoist would interpret an act of charity as being a case of a person displaying her personal wealth and power over others less fortunate than she is (This example can be found in Hobbes' Leviathan — Hobbes is a psychological egoist). This act of charity can thus be reduced to an action that promotes an agent's self-interest, and was not really done for the sake of others in need.

As you can see, these two theories are very different. Psychological Egoism, being a theory of moral psychology, is what can be considered an 'error theory' about moral terms (moral language). While we think that moral terms like 'charity', 'generosity' and 'altruism' are words we use to refer to actions that consider the needs of other people, we are mistaken. Ultimately, we only consider the needs of other people insofar as they affect our fundamental self-interest. All our actions, at heart, are self-interested, according to this theory. Ethical Egoism is not a theory of moral psychology. It is a theory that suggests that self-interest is a principle by which we can determine whether actions are right or wrong. Typically, this theory suggests that since every person has one life to live, and this life is of fundamental value, actions that do not promote this fundamental, individual good are wrong. Moreover, trying to promote the self-interest of other people does them an injustice (is paternalistic), since no person can live the life of any other person and know what is truly in their best self-interest.

One can be an Ethical Egoist without falling into Psychological Egoism quite easily because the Ethical Egoist does not deny that people may be motivated by things like concern for the common good, concern for the good of one's family, community or nation, or even pure, saintly altruism. There can be a plurality of things that motivate our actions, but Ethical Egoism tells us that some of these motivations might be irrational, useless or harmful. Unless we employ our understanding that self-interest should guide our actions, we will often do the wrong thing. Unlike Psychological Egoism, Ethical Egoism is not an error theory about the meaning of our moral terms. It may suggest (very strongly) that altruistic actions are wrong, but it does not say that altruism is really, when looked at deeply enough, a self-interested action. The Psychological Egoist might applaud altruistic acts, since she believes that these actions, like ALL the rest, really express self-interest. The Ethical Egoist would not.

Maureen Eckert

Lizzie asked:

What are the ways in which emotion might enhance and/ or undermine reasoning?

I don't think anyone would have the least doubt that emotions do both. When you're on a 'high', things come easily to you, and when you're low, thinking can become an intolerable chore. I suppose your question is not about the mechanism involved, so this leaves us with two 'faculties' that occasionally contend with each other for priority. It also leaves us with two camps of informed opinion, which are probably both right, but have thus far failed to discover a common denominator.

Briefly, the first camp is entrenched in the belief that reason is the 'glory of mankind' and should therefore have priority; in particular, the advocates of this view contend that our emotional life is pretty much the same as for all mammals, at a pinch more subtly responsive, but still pretty crude. A very vocal proponent was the late Arthur Koestler, in his day a bestselling writer on interesting philosophical issues (and therefore sometimes referred to as a philosopher, but that's probably stretching it). At any rate, in his book The Ghost in the Machine he gives an extensive analysis of the troubles which our emotions cause us, who must live and work in societies which exceed in the complexity of their organisation anything encountered elsewhere in the animate realm. In order to give reason a chance, he proposes that conflict situations might be controlled by the administration of some otherwise 'harmless' chemical substances. I suggest that this book, even though it might seem dated, is eminently worth reading and not difficult to follow — after all, it was written with the general public in mind and the issue itself can hardly be said to have made much progress since. I do not suggest that Koestler was ever alone; rather he reflects a very widespread sentiment that emotions can be and usually are the downfall of reason, although he also concedes their value. But altogether he promulgates the notion that we human possess a kind of aggregate of emotional modules, what he calls the inheritance from the croc, the horse and our hominid ancestors, all afflicted with an innate 'wiring defect'. This defect occurred because evolution cannot not dismantle structures once they're in place, but only add to them; and since no designer was around to supervise the wiring, it happened higgledy-piggledy, one on top of the other without any definitive resolution to the hierarchy in charge of dealing with conflicts between emotion and reason.

NB: Another good book on the same subject is The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan. I'm deliberately referring you to such semi-popular accounts, for unless you want to get embroiled in neurophysiology, this is where all the relevant information is laid out.

Needless to add, that philosophers on the whole sound the same regretful note about the presumed enmity between emotions and reason. Two notable exceptions are Hume and Schopenhauer; to the first we owe the famous quote, 'reason is the slave of the passions'. But neither one of this pair is really 'on the side' of the emotions. For this you have to go somewhere else.

You would obviously be aware that a lot of potboilers have been written recently with a view to encouraging us to 'let it all hang out', as if there were some especial merit to emoting all over the place. There is neither philosophical nor even any social merit in this and I suppose Koestler would turn in his grave if he knew. Nevertheless, there are serious studies of the virtues of the emotions; and in particular of the indispensability of the 'despised' passions for the health of our reason. For it must be said that, as much as emotions can be analysed down to positively harmful features of our psyche, so reason, when examined closely, turns out to be a very fragile instrument, whose gravest demerit is a kind of 'abstractedness' from life in the raw — in other words, it encourages in us a sort of pristine dedication to truth, love, beauty etc etc which not infrequently gives one the impression of having derived from cloud cuckoo land rather than any place you might find on earth. By the same token, reason which leaves emotion behind is inhuman, and there is plenty of historical evidence to prove this. Emotions and reason, in an ideal case, would keep each other in balance; and one way of looking at this would be to take note of the value structures which we human have erected, which might be said to reflect the good sides of both our emotional and rational faculties.

One book I have already recommended elsewhere in this issue can bear a second push; it is really an outstanding contribution to what we should know about reason and emotion and how our mental health depends on both of them. The book is Antonio Damasio's The Feeling of What Happens. Damasio was (is) a practising psychiatrist and neurologist, and I dare say, what he doesn't know isn't worth knowing. On top he is an exceptionally clear writer, so that I shall leave you in his capable hands it you should feel like pursuing this matter further.

Jürgen Lawrenz
Sydney

Linda asked:

How can my moral philosophy influence my business decisions?

That's a bit hard to answer when I don't know what your moral philosophy is, if you're looking for something specific. In addition, your question is confusing. I mean, if your moral philosophy tells you not to lie, to cheat, to steal, for example, then doesn't that influence your business decisions in rather obvious ways? Or, alternatively, if your moral philosophy did let you lie, cheat, or steal, then wouldn't your business dealings be radically different than the former alternative? So just what are you asking? Perhaps you are asking something like this: if your moral philosophy tells you that it is better not to lie, then how can you judge when it is the case that it is better, or that it is the case that you can lie to avoid a greater immorality. Is that it? You're asking how to make moral judgments, right? Because otherwise your question is pretty trivial, as you can see.

But that jumps the question into a realm which no one has been able to settle, as far as specifics go; I'm not going to give you any specific examples. But I'll answer your question in general terms. First, you might look at the writings of Singer: there's a philosopher who's not afraid to make judgments, whatever you may think of them. Actually, whether or not I agree with him, I greatly admire him. Why? Because he's doing something that requires great courage, and that most people avoid doing: he's attempting to use his philosophy to make real-world judgments. Make them, justify them, and stick with them, and, as far as I know, he's open to argument and change. After all, if there's any good at all to philosophy, that's what has to be done with it, right? That's why religious figures are admired, also. They have lived according to their moral philosophy (well, a few of them). The problem I have with the latter types is that they are almost uniformly not open to change, and that latter characteristic is, in my opinion, absolutely essential. After all, what if you make a mistake in logic? What if you have misunderstood something, or simply haven't had enough data, or your data has been biased? Then you need to be able to change your decisions, maybe even revise your philosophy... something most saints cannot do.

So, then, what this comes down to is that in order to make making moral judgments part of your life, you have to a) have a fairly clear idea of what your philosophy is, and b) become a saint, bodhisattva, or otherwise uncompromising, but rational (in the best sense of that word) worldly philosopher. A tough row to hoe... but you asked.

Steven Ravett Brown

DT asked:

How do you define one's soul, one's consciousness, one's gut feeling? Is it relative to learned behavior? Does the soul need a physical brain?

The soul is often thought to be immortal and so not dependent upon physical brain. We can imagine that we could exist without embodiment and the possession of a brain, so it is logically possible that soul might not be dependent on brain. But it doesn't seem to be empirically or naturally possible given scientific knowledge these days. These days, atheists think that there could be no mental existence without brain, and it is also thought that the soul is simply a mental capacity, or subjective consciousness. Workers in artificial intelligence seem to believe that they can create consciousness without an organic brain, but the only evidence of this behavioural and physical. Response to external stimuli is no guarantee of soul or consciousness.

I would define the soul as an individual consciousness and this consciousness as subjectivity or internal life. A gut feeling, or instinct, comes very much from within and because it cannot be explained, it is thought to emanate from the unconscious and is not related to reality in the same way as perception or thought is.

Behaviour is learned in the sense that it is dependent upon our interactions with the external world and other people. Behaviour is functional and if a person was simply in a total void, where there was nothing, there would be no cause, reason or motivation towards behaviour.

So, yes, the soul and consciousness are derived from learned behaviour. Gut feelings, even if emanating from the unconscious, are also derived from interactions with others and the environment. Instincts may not be rational insofar as we cannot explain them, but if there had never been interactions with the world and others nothing would become repressed into the unconscious and nothing would give rise to such feelings.

Rachel Browne

Barbara asked:

Do ants have immortal souls? If not how can humans? after all from a distance we may as well be ants too.

We would not, I think, even look like ants from a distance, let alone be ants. After all, we would not appear to have feelers or nipped in waists. But even if we looked like ants, would that mean were were ants?

As for souls, I don't believe ants have souls, but then I am pretty skeptical about whether people have them either. But that is neither because humans are ants nor because ants don't have souls.

Ken Stern

Eric asked:

Returning to what mathematical logic is:

When I say "for all..." or "if ..then..." may I be assuming something that is false?

(I guess there are certain hidden assumptions in the above statements, at the most aggregate level the assumption of space and time.)

May the conclusion that I come up with be wrong as I begin with false assumptions during working with any type of mathematical logic? The question is: Has there been an effort to generate a representation that is free of space, or, time; or both space and time-related assumptions?

Can you recommend me any reference where I can read more about such representations, if they exist of course?

In answer to the first question: yes, of course you can be assuming something false. 'If cows had no tails, then they couldn't swat flies'. A true statement starting with a false assumption, leading to a wrong (but true, given the logic) conclusion.

(In answer to your second question... yes, there are, at least according to some people. Read: Lakoff, G., and R.E. Nez. Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2000.)

In answer to question 3: do false assumptions give wrong conclusions? See1.

4. Yes. But what you're really asking is whether the effort has been successful. Most logicians would consider your question trivial, and answer that of course, any logic is free of those 'assumptions' (a bad term on your part; they aren't assumptions; they're underlying structures). But given what Lakoff and Nunez say, that they are metaphors which are basically built into the way we think, roughly speaking, some cognitive linguists would say that humans cannot escape those structures. Kant would say the same thing.

Read the Lakoff/ Nunez book for an argument that they cannot exist.

Steven Ravett Brown

Jeff asked:

Due to the inherent ambiguity of the term "God", the proposition "God exists" can be either true or false depending exclusively upon the definition of the term. Atheism — to be understood as "without belief in God or gods" — erroneously concludes that the proposition is always false. In fact, if we grant atheism validity, atheism itself would thereby conclude that "God" is to be understood as a conceptual manifestation — and thus existent, if only as a concept. Does this prove that atheism is by definition untenable?

You seem to be playing around the meanings of words used and reaching conclusions based on differing uses of the words. Consider the following argument:

All banks are financial institutions
All rivers have banks
Therefore all rivers have financial institutions.

Now given that each of the premises are true we must logically accept the conclusion. The reason we have however for avoiding the conclusion is that the word 'bank' is used in two different ways. You seem to be making an analogous move with respect to God. Of course the spoken words 'God exists' can be true or false depending on the meaning we give to those words, in some possible world the utterance 'God exists' means 'there are dogs' which in that world is a truth. Clearly and atheist who denied this would be wrong. However whilst the word God may have different meanings depending upon the concept employed of God, each use of it has a specific determinate meaning which can be true or false.

'Atheism — to be understood as "without belief in God or gods" — erroneously concludes that the proposition is always false'

The mistake you make here is to confuse the actual meaning of the word atheism as used and the possible meaning. As illustrated above if 'God' actually means 'dogs' then atheism would be false in not believing in God, but given that the word 'God' has a definite content we can deny God's existence. Atheism doesn't assert that the utterance 'God exists' is necessarily false, rather given the actual meaning of the utterance it is false.

What's more, under your analysis the theist suffers equally. God exists can be true or false and so to assert that God exists erroneously concludes that God exists is always true. Unfortunately I didn't really understand what you meant by your penultimate sentence, if atheism does deny that we have the concept of God then it would seem that it is false; there are however two options here both of which are highly plausible. First the atheist can just say that we don't have a coherent concept of God, it is in fact self contradictory, in a similar way to my concept of a round square. Secondly they can say yes we have the concept of God but so what? Unless we have some sort of Ontological argument which defines God into existence by virtue of having the concept God then the atheist looses nothing.

Mike Lee

Max asked:

Once upon a time all subjects would have been classified as "philosophy" — mathematics — chemistry — psychology — astronomy — physics — and so on were all subjects studies by the "philosopher".

As each discipline became more mature, and developed theories of sufficient complexity and soundness (and may I dare to say became useful) it peeled away from philosophy to become an area of study which stood alone.

Now universities have many many departments set up to study subjects which would once have been a part of philosophy.

Presumably if a new subject area which is presently a part of philosophy becomes strong enough it too will leave the nest.

Philosophy (these days) therefore seems to be the scrap heap of discussions and theories which never really got of the ground. Almost by definition if a subject area develops any real solutions it ceases to be philosophy (like the above examples).

Is it time for the few remaining to jump the sinking ship — or can philosophy still serve a useful purpose?

Your questions are, if I'm well: (1) Is philosophy a sinking ship, and (2) if not what useful purpose does it serve?

To answer your first question:

Partly you answered it yourself. Philosophy is about questions, while the resulting sciences are about answers. As soon as serious research for an answer to a specific question is started, THEN it is not a philosophic question anymore. That doesn't mean every philosophic question results in a science, but that most essential questions start as philosophy.

Now your second question:

An example. Thomas Kuhn introduced the idea paradigm shifts. He was also a physician, but for this science this idea at first was too vague. So he wrote a philosophical work named The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. This work is mentioned by sociologists, physicians and philosophers, but it started as philosophy.

So the purpose of philosophy is valuing every new idea, however strange. This habit made it survive in evolution. That doesn't mean be uncritical but unprejudiced. Present postmodern philosophy may seem strange, but possibly hides a useful core. Let them be. Philosophy is about ideas, that preferably contradict or extend the other existing sciences.

BUT if questions in philosophy could be solved by an existing science, than those questions are NOT philosophical, and don't belong in philosophy.

Henk Tuten

Yes, one way to view philosophy is in terms of subject matter, and then (although this is somewhat controversial) I think you're basically correct) one finds that virtually all the sciences, math, etc., were at one point branches of philosophy, and have left and become their own fields as they've become empirically investigated. A somewhat sad comment on philosophy... until you realize two things. One is that it's nice to be in on the birth of a science, isn't it. The other is that we don't know that we've run out of sciences to give birth to... look at what's happening with cognitive science and consciousness right now.

In addition, one might argue that some subject matters will not be empirical; morality, for example. I do not agree with this, by and large, but it's a point, and in addition morality is certainly not empirical yet. Further, what about things like learning how to live together, how to live a happy life, how to be productive and satisfied in the world? It may be that science could give guidelines for this, indeed I think it likely... but that won't be the case for individuals. Each person will have to apply their general thinking to their individual situation, or a combination of that general thinking and science, to live a satisfactory life.

Now, aside from philosophy as subject matter, there's philosophy as process, i.e., as the study of process. What is the best way to learn to think? What should we think about? That is, I very strongly believe that philosophy, done correctly, teaches clear thinking and flexibility better than any specific subject area. In fact I think that this is a prime reason philosophy should be taught in lower-level schools as well as higher-level. And this relates to my paragraph above. If you want to apply your own thinking about morality, how to live a good life, etc., to your own individual life, then don't you want to know how to think these things through, come to conclusions, and apply them? Look at all the mistaken moral systems, utopias, and so forth. So many people jump to conclusions, harbor contradictory ideas... the list of possible process mistakes is enormous.

So, no, the ship isn't sinking, and we shouldn't jump it. We just need to distinguish this particular ship from the others.

Steven Ravett Brown

Rhys asked:

Does consciousness imply a soul?

For example, does artificially created consciousness, which is currently being developed, imply that a soul has also been created?

Would robots also be able to puzzle over whether or not they have a soul in the same way we do?

I am going to be very short with my answer, mainly because this is a subject that crops up time and again and the answer has to be the same every time as well. To take a stand, however, on your three points explicitly: 1. Yes. For a human being, consciousness implies a soul. It is, if you like, the default explanation until someone comes up with something more convincing. 2. I am dubious about artificial consciousness. The whole concept rests on a fundamental error and is (in the end) nothing but a self-deception of the kind we humans tend to fall into from time to time.

Let me therefore acquaint you with two important FACTS: Firstly, that consciousness is known only to occur in (living) organisms. Consequently what we know about consciousness is exclusively derived from the study of organisms known to have consciousness. Secondly: NOBODY knows what consciousness is. Science, which you believe is in process of 'creating' artificial consciousness, does not have a description for consciousness. But science cannot develop anything for which it lacks a description. Accordingly I invite you to entertain from here on a healthy scepticism about such claims and in particular to demand PROOF from any proponent that artificial intelligence is possible at all, viz to demonstrate to you that they fully understand the concept of consciousness. You may then discover (as I did in years of