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(1) Demetreus asked:
Descartes and Plato equate knowledge with complete certainty.
Do you agree that knowledge requires this very high standard?
If knowledge means being certain, is there anything we can
truly know?
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Methinks Demetreus would not have posted this question, if it hadn't been on his philosophy class assignment sheet. Quite a lot of these questions find their way to Ask a Philosopher. I'm not averse to answering them because they show something revealing about the way philosophy is taught in many colleges and universities.
The topic is Epistemology or 'Theory of Knowledge'. The term comes from the Greek word episteme which Plato in his Republic contrasts with doxa or mere belief. According to Plato, you can't have episteme of things in the empirical world — the world in space and time — because empirical objects are shifting and uncertain. You can only have doxa. Whereas episteme is reserved for eternal things: the objects of mathematics, and, ultimately, the Forms.
Descartes argued in his Meditations that empirical knowledge is possible, but only on the basis of a proof of the existence of a benevolent God, who has so arranged things in this world that provided that we use our capacity for judgement responsibly, we will not be led astray. Even so, Descartes knew full well — as he explains in Meditation 6 — that even when you exercise exquisite care in making judgements, a judgement can still turn out to be false. The acquisition of empirical knowledge relies on mechanisms like perception, which for natural reasons — the laws of nature which God Himself decreed — can sometimes fail to deliver the goods.
Why can we only know the Forms? Why is God needed to make knowledge possible? These are deep and fascinating questions for students of Plato and Descartes. Unfortunately, a style of lazy thinking seems to have crept into Epistemology, which lays the blame on the requirement of certainty. According to the lazy view, Plato and Descartes were wrong, because they didn't realize that certainty isn't required for knowledge!
This is such a preposterous idea, no wonder generations of tyro philosophy students are baffled by it.
The anonymous author of the question, an instructor at some college somewhere, has obviously realized that there is a lacuna here so he/ she has inserted the adjective 'complete'. This is like a flashing red light. Why the need for a qualification? Certainty is certainty. Does knowledge entail that you are certain, or does it not? If I tell you I'm certain, and then you go on to ask me if I'm completely certain, you deserve a smack in the jaw.
Most persons who have not been subjected to first-year Epistemology classes would say knowledge does imply certainty. Suppose I remark, 'Sue knows that Bob is cheating on her.' I have made two claims. First, Bob is cheating on Sue. That's bad. It's not the sort of thing you'd want to make a mistake about. (I haven't said I know that Sue knows that Bob is cheating on her because that's already implied by what I said.) The second claim is that Sue knows this. By implying that I know, I have also implied that I am sure of my ground. I am certain. By stating that Sue knows, I imply not only that Sue is sure of her ground, but also that she in a position to be sure. If Sue told someone, 'Bob is cheating on me', the hearer could take this information as authoritative, not open to doubt.
That's how he concept of knowledge works. If you are not sure, if there is any element of uncertainty, then you should say so otherwise you are behaving irresponsibly. You are giving your audience grounds for thinking that you are an authoritative source of the information in question, when you are not. You are only guessing.
Do we really go through all this palaver in daily life? Yes, we do. We just don't think about it in such explicit terms.
However, these are just the kinds of facts that the sceptic exploits. Arguments for scepticism typically take the form of pointing out the many ways in which it is conceivable that you could be wrong. Descartes in Meditation 1 comes up with a real show stopper: all my assumed 'knowledge' of the external world could just be a dream fed to me by an evil demon. You might think the idea is spectacularly improbable, but it is logically possible. In that case, you can't rule it out completely. You don't have the right to be certain after all.
However, it is not necessary to go to such extremes in order to raise a question mark about ordinary claims to knowledge. 'Is Bob cheating on Sue?' 'Yes, I saw him together with Mary.' 'Does Bob have a twin brother in Australia?' 'Search me if I know.' 'If Bob had a twin brother, wouldn't it be possible that it was his twin brother on a visit from Australia you saw with Mary?' 'Yes, I suppose so.' 'In that case, would you like to revise your statement?'
It doesn't require too much ingenuity to come up with suitable defeating questions for just about any knowledge claim.
Philosophers have offered various solutions. According to David Lewis, knowledge is a contextual notion. Assume that Bob is cheating on Sue. The question is whether I know this. Based on what I saw them do in the park, there's no question in my mind. I know. I'm certain that he is. Then you hit me with the question about the possible twin brother. Now I don't know. All you did was ask me a question! (As it happens, Bob doesn't have a twin brother. But of course that's irrelevant because I've never thought to investigate.)
Lewises solution grabs the horns of the dilemma in both hands, but I don't like it because it leaves the whole notion of 'knowledge' seeming too damn paradoxical. I don't have a better solution. All I know is saying 'knowledge doesn't entail certainty' (or 'complete certainty' if you will) is a complete cop-out.
Geoffrey Klempner
(10) Amery asked:
I want to know if dreams can change the sort of person we are through a sort of 'life-experience'-esque way.
Is it possible?
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I get the point of your question, Amery. Our life experience can change the sort of person we are. If our dreams are part of our life experience, then dreams can change us too. Why not?
I agree. Dreams give you ideas. They are like thought experiments, things you could never try out in the real world. Or they can shock you with the consequences of your beliefs or actions by painting the resulting scenario in lurid colours. Above all, dreams are creative. They come from us, and yet they are at the same time totally unexpected events that come out of the blue. We meet things in our dreams just as we meet things in the real world.
Our life experience includes contingencies or things that happen to us over which we have only limited control. You apply for a job. You give it your best shot at the interview. But, ultimately, it is out of your hands whether your get the job or not. And getting that job could conceivably change your life, and ultimately change you. Or you could meet that special person, fall in love, and end up emigrating to South America.
Are dreams then 'part of life experience'? in this sense?
There is a powerful argument for saying that they are not, which derives from Sigmund Freud's famous book The Interpretation of Dreams. To understand Freud's position, it is necessary to appreciate his guiding methodological assumption, which we may call psychic determinism. This is a stronger principle than determinism understood merely as the rule that 'every event has a cause'. For Freud, events in dreams have a particular kind of cause, which confers essential meaning on that event.
According to psychic determinism, every detail in your dream (that is to say, every detail that you write in your 'dream book') has a meaning and an explanation. If I dreamed that I walked into a room which had seven chairs, that is different from dreaming that I walked into a room which had several chairs. The number seven must be significant, it cannot be merely accidental. If the chairs were green, rather than just 'some colour' then that colour is significant too.
Freud held that all the details in a dream (apart from the factual content taken from real life) express wishes deriving from the subconscious, in a disguised form which has been allowed past the 'dream censor'.
In other words, your dreams are statement about you, written in code. There is nothing accidental. Everything has significance, a large part of which is sexual in nature. Of course you can be changed by your dreams in this sense, if you are able to decode that meaning with the help of a psychoanalyst. You are changed because you discover something about yourself, something that was hidden in your subconscious.
Notwithstanding the importance of dream interpretation in analytic psychotherapy, I think Freud was wrong. Many details in our dreams undoubtedly have significance, but the assumption of psychic determinism is unwarranted, even as a merely methodological principle. It is simply too strong.
My case is not merely that Freud fails to justify this principle. What Freud fails to take account of is something which is fundamental to human nature, our capacity for genuine creativity, not in the Freudian sense of 'making the subconscious conscious' but rather in the sense of producing novelty through a process which has an irreducibly random element.
There's nothing necessarily mysterious about creativity in this sense. Human behaviour would be very rigid and hidebound if we couldn't come up with novel solutions to problems. Nor is it necessary to posit some unique, indescribable 'creative faculty'. Daniel Dennett in his book Brainstorms MIT 1981, pp.296-8 describes a simple process which he terms 'generate and test', whereby candidates are randomly generated and then tested for relevance or suitability. A scientific researcher looking for a solution to a problem does this. So does a novelist. What does Katy do next? Let's try some random possibilities and see where they lead.
In dreams we do this too. One situation leads to another through a peculiar kind of 'dream logic' where the criterion of 'relevance' is applied in a very loose way. Almost anything can happen.
I talked earlier about 'contingencies or things that happen to us over which we have only limited control'. We do not only meet up with these in real life. We also meet up with them in our dreams. We create our dreams, and yet, in an important sense our dreams are also something that happens to us, which might as well have been made by the world as by our own selves.
Geoffrey Klempner
(14) Bryan asked:
Hello. I noticed that sometimes invalid argument forms can support valid arguments. For example, the syllogism:
1. No A are B.
2. All B are C.
.: 3. No A are C.
Is an invalid argument form, but can support a valid argument if A is 'cats', B is 'collies', and C is 'dogs'. Yet, I think there is something more intuitive that I am missing. My question is that does this invalid argument form warrant the valid argument above or is there a warrant that makes the 'cats collies dogs' argument still invalid? I would have thought that it would still be invalid because a cat could be a dog, but I thought that to be a poor reason since by definition a cat is not a dog.
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I believe you're entirely right in feeling that there's something a bit off in the idea that an 'invalid argument form' might warrant a 'valid argument.' Here's what I think it is, following your example: the 'therefore,' or '.:' is, specifically, what is not warranted. That is to say, 1. is a true statement, as indeed no cats are collies; 2., likewise, is a true statement, since all collies are dogs; and 3., too, is a true statement, since as you note no cats are dogs, by definition. But the three true statements are not meaningfully or in any way necessarily linked, and hence a valid argument has not been made.
A valid argument is composed of valid premises and a valid conclusion; what you have, however, are simply three valid premises. That is, 'No A are C' is simply not a conclusion that can be drawn from the fact that 'No A are B' and 'All B are C'--even though it may also, as here, be a true statement or valid premise in its own right. 3. is coincidentally also valid, in the case that A = cats and C = dogs, but not because 1. and 2. are valid. This is why I said above that the 'therefore' was not warranted, or has not been earned.
Hence, too, the possibility of a series of variables here that would suggest one had reached a totally absurd conclusion. A = motorcars, B = Stalin, and C= dead Russian dictators, for example, would follow the exact same (il)logic of your original example, and hence might seem misleadingly to reach a valid conclusion by invalid logic, since the final statement (no motorcars are dead Russian dictators) would be true. But let us substitute 'things or people associated with iron' for C, and the fallacy becomes apparent. Both motorcars and Stalin are associated with iron, and so the idea that 'No A are C' could serve here as conclusion is immediately absurd.
The point in this is that it literally does not matter what the variables are set to--the final statement can be totally valid OR totally invalid because it is not in any way tethered to the preceding statements or premises.
To return to your original question more fully then, the 1.2.3. series you suggested is not a valid argument with an invalid form. It is, properly speaking, not an argument at all, but rather only a series of premises that do not yet reach a conclusion. It looks like an argument because it has a 'therefore' in it, but the 'therefore' is an intruding presence.
There does seem to me, though, a really interesting strain to your question, and that is its concern with what exactly makes logic logic. Why (either ontologically or rhetorically) do we experience the 'tethering' of arguments to one another in certain (and only certain!) as being so compelling? And are there not perhaps other examples where invalid premises or fallacious argument types really do produce valid conclusions? (Keeping in mind that the example we've been working with here is that of a coincidental third statement in a series, not of a conclusion produced from the first two.) As you're thinking through these questions, one book you may find of particular interest in Jeremy Bentham's Book of Fallacies. Or, from another angle, you might find psychologist P.E. Meehl's essay, 'Why I Do Not Attend Case Conferences,' useful; collected in his Psychodiagnosis: Selected Papers, it starts off with some general sniping and (from my perspective) unnecessarily snarky commentary on his profession, but from there it quickly moves through a very helpful list of common fallacies in social science arguments and explanations of same.
I hope this was helpful, and encourage you to continue in your thoughtful questioning.
Ira Allen
(19) Jim asked:
What is the philosophical definition of 'time'? It may seem simple but try to give an answer to a bright 10 year old boy.
He can read a clock. He wants a simple explanation of 'time' if there is one. I have come to the belief there isn't.
Geographically, us rounding the sun, is only a definition of the measure of time.
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Jim, I will accept your challenge of explaining time to a 10 year old. So there will be no discussion of theories of time from Aristotle to the present day, no arguments for or against the reality of time, no examination of fatalism and the problem of future contingents, or temporal becoming and the myth of passage, or any of the other stock problems from the academic philosopher's toolbag.
These are all gripping problems for me, but I would be struggling to explain why they are gripping to a 10 year old.
Time is a problem which baffles and mystifies me, and probably (though I can't be sure) was one of the first philosophical questions which I ever thought about, long before I had ever heard of a subject called philosophy.
I have a memory fragment as a boy of being driven by my father to the dentist. This was before they had high speed drills and pain-killing injections. I would have been about 9 or 10. I know this because I remember consoling myself with the thought that in an hour I would be travelling home in the car and I would say out loud, 'Cool for Cats!' And sure enough, on the way home I did remember to say it.
Cool for Cats was the title of a British popular music TV programme for young people which according to Wikipedia ran from 1956 to 1961. In 1961, I was 10 years old.
That little episode illustrates as well as anything the mystery of time. I said 'Cool for Cats!' twice. The first time I said it, the pain of the dentist's drill was in the future. The second time I said it, the pain was in the past. What a difference an hour makes! Yet now, both events are just things that happened a long time ago.
A clock measures the distance between events or 'things that happen' just as a ruler measures the distance between two points. There's no mystery about that. The hands of a clock go round the dial at a standard speed which is the same for all clocks, measured in hours, minutes and seconds. A ruler is a standard distance measured in inches or centimetres.
It would be a rather strange request if you asked, 'Don't tell me about how you measure length, I just what to know what length is!' Length just is what a ruler measures, there's nothing more to it. (Well, that's not strictly true if you really wanted to delve into the nature of space, but it will do for now. I would argue that there's no mystery about length or distance, the way there is about the passage of time.)
A clock is an instrument which measures events, and your entire life up to the present moment — or indeed the history of the universe — is just a series of events. When I said 'Cool for Cats!' twice, those were just two events in my life, two insignificant events in the history of the universe. Yet at the time there was a world of difference between them.
But how would you express that 'difference' in the form of a definition? Consider: every second that the clock ticks is an example of the ever-shifting difference between past, present and future. Sometimes, an event (like a trip to the dentist) brings the difference to our attention. But it was there all the time. It is here now, as I type these letters on the screen, as I look away from the computer and look back again, as I lift my finger to scratch my nose, or take a sip of lukewarm coffee I made half an hour ago.
Maybe that's one way philosophers stand out from other people: they learn to ponder things — seemingly trivial things — you wouldn't normally think about. You could describe it as a sense of 'childlike wonder', although not all children are equally gifted with it.
I don't know if this is making any sense. Or whether it would make sense to a 10 year old. I'm not talking about fancy theories. I'm talking about an experience, something that you just have to see. And when you see it, see it for what it is, you realize that you don't understand it at all. That's why I call time a mystery.
Geoffrey Klempner
(22) Sinead asked:
Can acts of terrorism be justified?..with reference to ted Honderich's concept of'terrorism for humanity'.
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Many learned authorities defend the indefensible, and the point of referring to them sometimes escapes me.
Nevertheless, because it bears on the moral consequentialism discussed in another answer, here goes.
Ted Honderich has written a great deal in a certain contrarian vein, the common thought of which is that everything Bush knows about the evils of islamic terrorism is wrong. There is hope that this contrarian trend in thought thought may die a death now that Bush has been replaced by Obama, because it is never a good idea to assess something on the basis if whether a politician you hate is against it.
In this vein, Honderich wrote a piece called 'Terrorisms in Palestine', which as the name implies, argues that Hamas is no worse than the Israeli Government. What ought to interest us is the philosophical argument that underlies this conclusion.
Partly because I feel under-qualified in historical fact, and partly because on experience I am sceptical that arguments between variant interpretations of the facts can produce any general understanding or conciliation, I am just going to skip the history of the Middle East in what Ted Honderich has to say about terrorism — or at least, I'm not about to argue variant interpretations of the facts, and I will offer no verdict here on what ought to happen in Palestine. This might seem like cheating, except that it seems to me that there is more than history and politics to Ted Honderich's thought here. There is also, it would seem, the application to history of some rather striking moral thought, and it may be useful to examine that thought on it's merits.
TH opens 'terrorisms in palestine' with a statement of his guiding principal — a statement which is recognisably philosophical. He pursues precision and clarity, and he uses lots of clauses. He writes:
'My principle... the Principle of Humanity... is that the right or justified thing as distinct from others — the right action, practice, institution, government, society or possible world — is the one that according to the best judgement and information is the rational one in the sense of being effective and not self-defeating with respect to the end of getting and keeping people out of bad lives — which lives can be clearly defined in terms of fundamental human desires or goods. In my list there are six such desires or goods — a decent length of conscious life , a bodily quality of life including absence of pain, freedom and power in various settings, respect and self respect, and the goods of culture, including knowledge, religion and more.'
Clarity might be helped by brevity, so here's my brief precis of the above:
'an act is right in so far as the foreseeable consequences prevent bad lives'
You should compare this with the quoted paragraph. The profit in the precis is that, put like this, we can see that the two crucial ideas in TH's 'Principle of Humanity' are bad lives and foreseeable consequences . The precis isn't perfect, because it is imprecise on one rather important point, a point of imprecision also evident in TH's own expression of the 'Principle of Humanity'. It's a fair guess that TH does not have it in mind that in order to get and keep people out of bad lives it is obligatory to go around killing anyone who may now have, or be likely in the future to have, a bad life . No, we can assume that TH wants to 'get and keep' people out of bad lives in the sense in which the project in fact amounts to getting people into good lives, and keeping them there. We should therefore amend the precis so that if TH wants to prevent bad lives, as my precis has it, then this is preventing bad lives in some sense in which this is synonymous with promoting good lives. Therefore, even though TH makes no mention of good lives, it is still the case that a better precis of his 'Principle of Humanity' would read:
'an act is right in so far as the foreseeable consequences promote good lives'
A reservation is that it might be somehow important that TH fights shy of the expression 'good lives' in expressing his 'Principle of Humanity'. I suppose the implication of TH's choice here is that it may be profitably clear what a bad life is, whereas the age old pursuit of a definition of the good life has — it might be thought — merely stirred up mud. Consider the utilitarian who is asked to define happiness. And when television shows you a mother grieving by her son's coffin the idea that unhappiness is something much clearer than the slippery idea of happiness is hard to avoid. Here is rock bottom. Here is a clear vision of hell. Well, I can see the justice in that thought. At the same time I wonder whether it goes the distance. Do such clear intuitions of another's suffering carry over into clarity about exactly which lives are bad lives? Are we left with the kind of notion of a bad life which can do the work TH wants it to do, namely the work of distinguishing right actions from wrong ones?
Despite our moments of clear vision on the TV, TH feels a philosopher's need to define'bad lives'. He goes about this by listing some fundamental human goods that bad lives may be understood in terms of.
'In my list there are six such desires or goods — a decent length of conscious life , a bodily quality of life including absence of pain, freedom and power in various settings, respect and self respect, and the goods of culture, including knowledge, religion and more.'
That's quite a good list of things that matter to humans. An adequate definition would go beyond any such list, however. As things stand I do not yet know whether a bad life , such as a right action is concerned to prevent, is one which fails to realise all of these goods together, or one which fails to realise any, or one which fails to realise a proportion, or whether there is a mean on all counts which divides good from bad halves of a continuum, or whether some of these goods are more important than the others, or how I can tell if the list is exhaustive or not, nor, in short, do I have the first idea about how I ought to use such a list to assess a particular life for badness and compare human lots. Now of course, I do have some ideas about which of my friends and acquaintances are or are not having good lives just now, but as to consistency or unifying principles behind such thoughts, or as to how I ought to accord TH's 'Principle of Humanity' with these judgements, well I'm presently clueless.
More to the point TH's discussion leaves me clueless. Perhaps I can quantify 'a decent length of conscious life ' (I say: three score years and ten, though others nearer that age may demur). And Perhaps I can also, most of the time, competently tell people in agony from those that are not. But on the other desiderata I am at a loss to tell whether I or anyone I know has achieved them satisfactorily or not — or, for that matter, what would be satisfactory. Does Bill have freedom and power in various settings? About Mary, does she have satisfactory respect and self respect? James, does he get enough of the goods of culture, or does he work too hard? I just don't know how to apply these desiderata to an assessment of the lives lead by my friends and acquaintances, or to an assessment of my behaviour towards them. The 'Principle of Humanity' doesn't help us here in quite the way we would expect a moral principle — or a principle for assessing rightness in action — to help.
I imagine that, if pressed on this difficulty, TH might well admit that yes, his 'Principle of Humanity' (at least as it is presently developed) does not, as yet, help very much with telling right from wrong in our treatment of the human beings we westerners usually know personally, because in the usual cases we don't know exactly which of them are or are tending towards having bad lives according to these rather sketchy criteria, and know even less which actions would push their lives in which direction. TH's retort would be, I think, that his 'Principle of Humanity' was invented to help us tell right from wrong not in little matters, as it were, but on the large scale, between peoples and states and so on — and in these cases (he might say) statistics on life expectancy and medical emergency can be used to clearly tell the difference between peoples or states where most individuals are having bad lives, and other peoples or states where most individuals are not having bad lives, such that our assessment of right and wrong actions towards peoples and states can then be deduced from such accessible data. Refocused specifically on international politics, TH's 'Principle of Humanity' might possibly survive the objection that calculation of the various imponderables listed under the heading of the foreseeable consequences for promoting good lives is a daft way of assessing whether David punching his little sister was a case of right action.
The problem with this defensive strategy, from TH's point of view, is that it would raise the rather difficult question of why we should assess right action towards states and peoples on entirely different kinds of criteria to those on which we ordinarily assess right and wrong. It was precisely to avoid such a difficult question that TH claimed a universal range for his 'Principle of Humanity', presenting it as the correct method for assessing right action, period. This universal range is something it clearly does not have.
What TH offers us, inadequate as a definition of the bad life , is actually pretty good when considered as a sketch of the good life . Thus, in the good life I would have a decent length of conscious life , a bodily quality of life including absence of pain, freedom and power in various settings, respect and self respect, and the goods of culture, including knowledge, religion and more. Excellent. The mention of a bodily absence of pain is particularly redolent of nirvana. But what TH here claims to be offering is a 'clearly defined' picture of a bad life , and he gives us not a clue about exactly what connection is intended between some intended and 'clearly defined' picture of a bad life , and the picture he in fact offers us of the good life . I suppose we might say that any life falling short of the listed desiderata is not the good life , and is therefore is a bad life . That way of understanding the implied connection between the notion of the good life that TH gives us and the morally decisive notion of the bad life wouldn't suit TH, since it would suggest that, given the empirical evidence as to human perfection, all actions whatsoever have as their foreseeable consequences countless bad lives. From which it would follow that all actions are equal in their badness.
That's clearly not what TH has in mind. He means this moral calculus as a way of identifying the side of the just. He must have it that that there are some actions that lead more bad lives and some that lead to fewer, as if the edges of the bad life idea were evident and present in the world. But in what we have from him, TH's idea of a bad life is not delineated at all. He draws us a brief sketch of the good life and quits the scene, as if that alone were enough to furnish us with that 'clearly defined' picture of the bad life from which all right and wrong in action may derive. Rhetorically, TH leaves us with the impression that he has a worked out decision procedure for distinguishing right from wrong action — which procedure he can apply to Palestine. He in fact offers no such procedure.
Leaving the matter of 'Bad lives', note now that TH offers an interesting moral philosophy that I want to call quasi-consequentialism, where what matters in assessing the moral character of of an act is neither the consequences of the act, nor specifically that assessment of consequences forming the intentions of the actor, but a third thing: the consequences of that act according to 'the best judgement and information'. I spoke about these as the foreseeable consequences . The important point here is that the foreseeable consequences are not necessarily the same as the consequences foreseen or intended by the actor, nor always the same as the actual consequences . To bring out the way this quasi-consequentialist view departs from more familiar standpoints, note the way it permits TH to endorse the terrorism of both the Zionist Stern Gang and the radically islamist Hamas, despite the fact that many of the key intentions of both these groups are repugnant to TH, and despite the fact that TH also deplores the ultimate consequences of Zionism. This is possible because what he is endorsing here is neither the intentions, nor the actual consequences , but the foreseeable consequences of the two contrary terrorist campaigns.
Thus according to TH whatever the intentions or actual consequences of 1948 Zionist struggle, the foreseeable consequences according to the 'best judgement and information' were good. TH claims that the 'best judgement and information' supported the Zionist campaign as most likely to lead to preventing bad lives. Now, fifty years later, with newly available information about the bad lives of the palestinians, and on TH's assumption that Palestinian terrorism 'will succeed in the end' in creating a state where fewer people lead bad lives, TH is able to claim that the foreseeable consequences of Hamas suicide bombings make these terrorist actions right as well, right in just the same foreseeable consequences way that the Stern Gang bombings were right. For TH there need be no contradiction in having given moral justification to both the Stern Gang and Hamas, given that the morally relevant facts are the foreseeable consequences , rather than any facts about the actual or intended consequences .
Questions might be asked about the key details of this curious quasi-consequentialism, perhaps centrally about the meaning of 'best judgement and information', about who would be in a position to say what this is, and about what criteria for the identification of the 'best judgement and information' may be in operation. Obviously it would be good if the criteria here were more substantial than, say, whatever endorses the view I happen to hold at a particular time. TH does not address this point about criteria directly, but it is clear that he does not mean by 'best' something divine or ideal. Best human judgement and information can be fallible and incomplete, as for instance he holds to have been the case with the best judgement and information about the consequences of the creation of Israel. TH says nothing very helpful about what identifies the best judgement and information as the best, and this ought to be a little worrying. The Palestinians might have cause to object to TH that they were in a position to foresee consequences for bad lives, based upon their best judgement and information, that made the creation of the state of Israel wrong in 1948. The moral rightness of the creation of Israel in 1948 is something that TH endorses, but he does so on the basis of best judgement and information available to a non-palestinian perspective. Thus he argues, intriguingly, that the inconceivability to American eyes of establishing a Jewish Homeland in Germany in 1948 is an essential part of the rightness — which endorses — of the creation of that homeland in Palestine.
These are tricky knots. He implies here that there is a sense in which the contemporary American perspective on the postwar struggle for a Jewish homeland is nearer to 'best judgement and information' than is the information and judgement of the palestinian arabs. This is so despite the fact that the judgement of the palestinian arabs is the one he ends up endorsing as true, fifty years late, as they would see it. So patently, by 'best' in 'best judgement and information' he not only doesn't mean ideal, he doesn't mean truest either. But then what does he mean? What is it that privileges the US assessment in 1948, and the PLO or Hamas assessment in 2007? It is not at all clear on what basis TH would have us assess what is the 'best judgement and information', either today or at any given point in history. He makes no suggestions in his paper as to how we should identify this crucial part of his moral calculus. He simply asserts that this or that is, or was, the best available information and judgement. This is, at the least, something of an oversight.
To make one further point which is more important than the few words needed to state it would suggest, I doubt that TH is being wholly helpful in speaking of his morally relevant bad consequences as 'bad lives'. Hitler's life was, I would say, bad, given that it encompassed a fair degree of suffering and failure and ended in suicide. It was certainly not an enviable life . Likewise the lives of slave labourers in Wolfsburg were bad, in that their fates were unenviable. But I find it hard to imagine, as TH's picture would have it, that the badness in Hitler's life is morally relevant to antecedent actions in just the way that the slave labourer's was. I cannot have Hitler's sufferings enter into the same calculus with these other sufferings. This is, of course, to restate an old kind of objection to consequentialism, and one which I treat as decisive. But it is an objection which TH's innovation of quasi-consequentialism does nothing to escape. Instead of adding the necessary discrimination between morally relevant suffering and morally irrelevant suffering to the tradition of consequentialist moral theory, TH introduces two notions whose content he makes no satisfactory effort to precisify. 'Bad lives' is one such. 'Best judgement and information' is the other. For Honderich, what matters for rightness is the best judgement and information about the consequences for bad lives, notwithstanding that he says nothing to help us identify best judgement and information or to delineate bad lives from satisfactory ones in a way applicable to ordinary moral judgements, and notwithstanding, also, that some people rather deserve bad lives.
This point connects rather with what I said to Ricardo in another answer.
David Robjant
(26) Ricardo asked:
I learnt about utilitarianism a while ago, through the work of Peter Singer, and I found it to be a very good ethical system. However, I reckon there are some vulnerabilities with this system. I heard one in a speech by Tom Regan, in which he asked if we should take into consideration the pleasure of a rapist before declaring rape wrong. I quickly came to the conclusion that an ethical system which only aims to minimize suffering would not be vulnerable to this argument and I found that there is indeed a system that requires us to promote the least amount of evil or harm, or to prevent the greatest amount of suffering for the greatest number, called Negative Utilitarianism. However, I'm facing a new challenge to this system after reading about a debate between Peter Singer and Richard Posner, in which Posner argues that if a dog threatened a human infant, and if it required causing more pain to the dog to get it to stop than the dog would have caused to the infant, then we, as human beings, favour the child. My moral intuition indeed tells me I would favour the child. Wouldn't I be incurring speciesism? Is there any way to justify my favouring the child without incurring speciesism?
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The first question that comes to mind is — from what ethical principle(s) are you judging that it is inherently wrong to incur speciesism? Certainly, neither Mill nor Bentham had any notion of applying the principles of Utilitarianism to non-human entities. If you are going to attempt to include non-human entities within the scope of 'moral worth', then I think you need to provide a rationale. Or, at the very least, state your unsupported premise right up front.
I think you will find as much disagreement over the extent of what ought to be covered by the term 'moral agent,' or be granted consideration as due 'moral worth,' as there is over the particular ethical principles that ought to apply to moral decisions.
The second question that comes to mind is — what happens if we consider the scenario with a human pedophile in the place of the dog. If a pedophile threatened a human infant, and if it required causing more pain to the pedophile to get him to stop than the pedophile would have caused to the infant, then we, as 'normal' human beings, favour the child. I don't know about you, but my moral intuition certainly tells me that I, at least, would favour the child. And in doing so, I wouldn't I be incurring speciesism. But I would be violating the strictures of Negative Utilitarianism.
I would argue that such counter-intuitive scenarios provide as much negative press for Negative Utilitarianism, as similar scenarios provide for Positive Utilitarianism. I would suggest to you that if one's moral premise is any version of Simple Utilitarianism (meaning — other than Rule Utilitarianism), it is quite easy to generate relatively simple scenarios where the theoretical result is deemed by most to be counter intuitive. In other words, I think that on the basis of either form of Simple Utilitarianism, it is impossible to justify our intuitive favouring of the child. (Hence, the attraction of Rule Utilitarianism. Although that too has its difficulties.)
Which brings me to the third question that comes to mind — is an ethical system that generates counter-intuitive 'oughts' an acceptable ethical system. Or is there necessarily something wrong with such a result?
If you argue that any system that produces the occasional ethical recommendation that is generally considered contrary to our moral intuition, is an acceptable basis from which to guide our moral behaviour, then you must acknowledge that our intuitive favouring of the child is an immoral emotional bias on our part. A hold over (perhaps) from past cultural speciesism, that should be stamped out. Just the way that racist, sexist, ageist, (etc.) emotional biases ought to be stamped out.
But if you argue that our collective moral intuitions (in favour of the child in this scenario) are more acceptable guides to proper moral behaviour than the recommendations of some proposed ethical system, then you must acknowledge that Simple Utilitarianism (of either Positive or Negative flavour) is fatally flawed. And you must seek an alternative system of ethics that is more in tune with our collective moral intuition that places greater moral worth in the welfare of the child than in the welfare of either dog or pedophile.
If you favour the first approach, then you are going to have to argue your case against all those who would disagree with you — that some evaluations of our moral intuitions are erroneous. If you favour the second approach, then you are going to have to argue your case against all those who would disagree with you — with regards to whatever alternative system of ethics attracts your attention.
In other words, no matter what you do, you are going to have to argue your case against people who disagree with you.
(But if you do happen to choose the second alternative, and go looking for an ethical system more in tune with our collective ethical intuitions, then may I suggest that you take a look at Evolutionary Ethics.)
Stuart Burns
(27) Ricardo asked:
Hi. I learnt about utilitarianism a while ago, through the work of Peter Singer, and I found it to be a very good ethical system. However, I reckon there are some vulnerabilities with this system. I heard one in a speech by Tom Regan, in which he asked if we should take into consideration the pleasure of a rapist before declaring rape wrong. I quickly came to the conclusion that an ethical system which only aims to minimize suffering would not be vulnerable to this argument and I found that there is indeed a system that requires us to promote the least amount of evil or harm, or to prevent the greatest amount of suffering for the greatest number, called Negative Utilitarianism. However, I'm facing a new challenge to this system after reading about a debate between Peter Singer and Richard Posner, in which Posner argues that if a dog threatened a human infant, and if it required causing more pain to the dog to get it to stop than the dog would have caused to the infant, then we, as human beings, favour the child. My moral intuition indeed tells me I would favour the child. Wouldn't I be incurring in speciesism? Is there any way to justify my favouring the child without incurring in speciesism?
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Posner slightly shot himself in the foot, by letting an unnecessary cross-species context into the point, which is a point against utilitarianism, positive or negative. So let's try to put that point better, and make species irrelevant. For 'dog' read 'romans' and for 'child' read 'christian'.
The romans are persecuting a christian in the arena. It happens that the several thousand romans would in total suffer more, for being deprived of their sport, than the christian does for undergoing the persecution (Lets be conventional and picture Lions).
Because there are enough persecuting romans that would each suffer if they could not to watch the persecution, the negative utilitarian calculation is decisively in favour of torturing christians for entertainment.
But it is wrong to torture for entertainment.
Therefore negative utilitarianism is a wrong theory of ethics (we've already agreed that positive utilitarianism is a wrong theory of ethics).
The point is: if the alleviation of suffering in those entertained by torture is to enter in to an assessment of the moral worth of that torture at all, it ought to enter in as a further point against doing it, and not for doing it, as the negative utilitarian moral proposal requires.
QED.
But one quick postscript on buddhists: I think they would say that the cause of suffering is illusion, and that the sadistic entertainment provided by the Romans (or by Channel 4) is actually deepening illusion and therefore (in the long term) causing suffering in the viewers, rather than as it may immediately appear alleviating it.
Possibly, therefore, the only way to make negative utilitarianism morally respectable according to our existing intuitions is: go buddhist. However, I wonder if intellectual attachment to an ethical theory of the sort you entertain is an adequate and solid ground for embracing buddha. The option is: reject utilitarianism.
David Robjant
(28) Scott asked:
Who is more intelligent?
A. A person who knows everything. is A (impossible?) Doesn't it depend on your environment? Student asked this question, I don't have a response for this HELP!! Right and wrong?
B. A person who knows he doesn't know everything.
I am teaching world history and my students attained this question from a Socrates quote: "I am the wisest man in the world, for I know one thing, and that is I know Nothing."
What is your opinion? and Do you mind if I share it with my students?
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Socrates doesn't just say, 'I know that I don't know everything.' He says, 'I know that I know nothing.' And that should make us pause, don't you think?
It goes without saying that it is impossible to know literally everything. No-one knows, or arguably ever could know regardless of how long they spent investigating, how many grains of sand there are on all the beaches in the world, or how many planets in the universe have intelligent life. On the other hand, you can know everything about a sufficiently restricted subject matter: for example, you might be a British soccer fan who knows the names of every winner of the FA Cup since 1872.
It's good to be modest in the evaluation of one's knowledge. It may not be the whole of wisdom but undoubtedly it is an essential part of becoming wise to recognize our all-too human failings and the ease with which we gather misinformation without even realizing it. Any good teacher recognizes that they are not infallible, and that it is far better to admit to your students that you don't know than pretend to knowledge which you do not have.
On the other hand, if you ask me what I think of President Obama, and I reply that I have no knowledge of politics and never listen to the news so I can't answer you, you are hardly likely to be impressed by my great 'wisdom'. If one is aware of important gaps in one's knowledge, one should do one's best to remedy them, and not rest content with being an ignoramus.
But this is largely irrelevant, so far as Socrates is concerned.
Consider the following argument: If Socrates knows nothing then it follows (e.g.) that he doesn't know whether or not he's wearing his toga. For all he knows (namely, nothing) he might be out in the market place stark naked. If he gets arrested for indecent exposure, the judge and jury are unlikely to be sympathetic to his plea that he was unaware he was committing any offence. — How do you think Socrates would reply to that argument?
'My dear fellow, you must realize there is no knowledge of the things of this world. All we have are more or less useful beliefs. I believe that I am wearing my toga and am confident in this belief. For practical purposes, confident belief is all we need. Knowledge, supposing that any person had it, can only be of ultimate things, the answers to the deep questions of philosophy. Nobody knows that, although many think they do.'
This is rather poignant for me, because I have to ask myself what I have been doing for the last 37 years; what decades of pondering the great questions has achieved since I first started along the road to philosophy. It is a charge not infrequently laid at philosophers, that they never make any real progress, and the best they can offer is endless disagreement and scepticism.
But there is another side of the coin. Philosophers see things for what they are. They are not easily fooled by bullshit and propaganda. They understand what is important, and what are merely the trivial concerns of passing fad and fashion. The world (just as Plato said in his Republic) is not what you think it is. We are all cave dwellers. Even if Plato was over-optimistic in thinking that the philosopher alone has the power to escape from the cave, at least one can make the attempt — over and over again if necessary.
Geoffrey Klempner
(33) John asked:
In evolution, it generally makes sense that an inhibitory function evolves AFTER the thing it is inhibiting.
As an example, the human has layers of cortex devoted to inhibitory behaviour, which effectively limit the lower brain layers.
The basic fight and flight instincts of the older brain, in addition to sexual drives, etc. are inhibited to stop us running around and impulsively just killing/raping/Stealing, etc. The inhibition layer comes after the earlier layers; meaning that prior to the inhibition we did actually just run round killing, raping, stealing impulsively (like on a Friday night out in Barnsley)
Now the interesting thing is that there are some inhibitory brain functions devoted to limiting the control that we can consciously exert over our own minds (mental self control).
This makes perfect sense from a genetic perspective if an individual can 'think' away hunger, they will be less inclined to find food, if they can 'think away' pain, they will be less likely to avoid noxious/aversive stimuli. If they can think pleasurable thoughts, which were as intense as the real thing, then the drive to achieve pleasure, e.g. through sex, becomes redundant, again so the survival chance lowers.
Now as these mental self control inhibitory processes do exist (e.g. ironic processes of Wegner) it assumes that prior to their evolution, there was a brief period where for a short time there existed individuals with full mental control, i.e. they could think away pain, think away hunger, etc. These could have been individuals who could have been true 'Lotus Eaters', absorbed in their own conscious worlds, and distanced from real world controls such as pain, hunger, sex, etc.
Enlightened apes?
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Lower and higher? Whoa there Mr teleologist!
In evolution, it generally makes sense that an inhibitory function evolves AFTER the thing it is inhibiting.
As an opening assertion, that's both attractive and baseless. It's an appeal to the beauty of a picture rather than to any point of fact. I mean, if the world were like this, it would be neat, wouldn't it? But there is really no adequate reason to think it is in fact like that, and you rather acknowledge as much with the use of the appealing and vague expression 'it generally makes sense that' in preference to an expression that would be more obviously falsifying. If you had said: 'it is necessary that an inhibitory function evolves AFTER the thing it is inhibiting' I could have answered simply by pointing out that no such evolutionary necessity exists. What you mean is that it would appeal to your sense of order and reason if an inhibitory function involved after the function it was to inhibit. But evolution is neither ordered nor rational, and you use terms that misrepresents what evolution is.
To explain.
Your argument rather ignores that selection acts upon random mutations, and that mutations do not pop-up to fulfill a discrete 'function'. Rather, mutations or DNA copying errors mess about with the coded creature in any number of ways that bleed across lots of different things that we are only much later able to call 'functions'.
Thus, there is no particular reason of any kind why some mutation can't lead perfectly well both to an antelope being more skittish re big cat noises, and to it's being more reflective about sexual partners.
Your argument also suffers from dividing 'functions', which as I have just pointed out are anyway not the things upon which evolution acts, into higher 'inhibitory' and lower non-'inhibitory' kinds. I'd like to know from what perspective we are to make this distinction? You seem to assume that whatever it is that enables a buddhist monk to sit reading improving texts must be something inhibitory, as if all that were required to behave like this was not to behave in some other way. But that's obviously false. There is no particular reason why I couldn't regard his ability with the scroll as the positive ability, and think of the drive to impregnate the nun in the next room as the inhibitory function. Except, of course, that this contradicts your claim that inhibitory functions are the ones that evolve last. But, as I have already pointed out, that claim is baseless on several levels. For one evolution doesn't act on functions, for another there is no one to one correspondence between a function and a mutation, and finally there is no privileged perspective from which we might see which functions are to count as 'inhibitory'.
There is no particular reason, just for instance, why the capacity to stand up should evolve after the capacity to fall down.
David Robjant
(37) Andrew asked:
Can you point me in the right direction to answer the following. I exist. There is no way that I can logically see that 'I' could not exist. To believe otherwise would be to accept that there are entities that do not exist, which I do not see as possible. My question is then, does this mean that I had to exist? That is not a matter of incredible chance but a certainty?
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It's not an uncommon feeling — the thought that somehow I had to exist, that there is no logical possibility that I could have failed to exist. For some, the train of thought does not end there. When I consider the prospect of my death, it seems impossible, for very similar reasons (if one can talk of reasons) that there will be a time when I do not exist.
But let's just concentrate on the first claim. In order to be here, writing this, my father had to produce the sperm that fertilized my mother's egg, which grew into a foetus and eventually became me. If the sperm and egg had not come together, I would not have existed. But exactly the same applies to the existence of my parents, and their grand parents, their great grand parents, and so on. If any one of those links had been broken — going right back to the beginning of the human race — I would not be here today. All in all, an incredible chance, a fantastical improbability.
It's almost impossible to believe. But let's just look at the alternative. I had to exist. I could not have failed to have been born. Am I willing to grant the same about you? Not at all. I have not the slightest difficulty in supposing that 'Andrew' (whoever he is) might not have existed, in which case I would have had to find some other question to answer today. (The supply of questions, and questioners, is never-ending.)
If I had to exist, but no-one else had to exist, then I must be very special. Maybe I'm God? That's a thought that might have occurred to one or two people. Fortunately, common sense and sanity usually prevail. It's generally considered acceptable to think of oneself as 'special', in the sense that one's relation to one's own existence has a unique character or flavour which is absent from one's relation to others. However, that hardly suffices to alleviate the sense of dizzying vertigo at the paradoxical improbability of one's own existence.
We are all in the same boat; that's true. The same logical problem applies to you as applies to me. I can only feel the paradox in my own case, just as you can only feel the paradox in your own case. But that's no help. I fully empathise with your saying what you say, because I'm motivated to say it too. The difference is that your saying what you say has an obvious explanation. That's why I'm not the least bit puzzled by the contingency of your existence. Why, then, can't I apply the same explanation to myself?
I can't. That's just a brute fact. That is what it is to be the possessor of a perspective on the world, a subjective standpoint. Yet, strangely, this observation does seem to point to a possible resolution. The sense of paradox doesn't go away. Rather, I get to see it for what it is: simply an inevitable consequence of the fact that I am stuck here, unable to step outside my own point of view even for a moment. There's something I can't see, not because there is any obstruction to my vision but because the very act of seeing places me here and not there.
I am not saying that we are unable to think about how things are from other points of view. It is built into the very nature of human language that we can contemplate what it would like to be in someone else's shoes, or even conceive of how things are from no particular point of view (how would you do science otherwise?). Yet, in all this, remains the stubborn fact — I am inclined to call it a stubborn metaphysical fact — that, necessarily, I am always the one asking the question. I can pose your question to myself; but I can't ask your question for you.
Geoffrey Klempner
(40) Suzanne asked:
What is one difference between socialism and communism?
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'Socialism' can mean anything you want it to, and there are those who by using it merely propose their own conception of the common good. There are others who by using it mean to slur such a conception of the common good and thereby avoid paying more tax.
The slur can be unpicked by examining a more precise meaning of 'socialism' in which the distinction between communism and socialism is tightly drawn — and then contrasting that idea of socialism with what Clement Attlee stood for.
For a Marxist-Leninist, Communism is the objective, and Socialism is the means. To put it another way: communism is what society looks like when it no longer needs government (the state 'withers away'), whereas socialism is what society looks like when it's being beaten and whipped towards communism.
To explain: the marxist hypothesis (owing something to Rousseau's romanticism) is that all human beings will be perfectly co-operative and virtuous towards each other, and thus will no longer need government, just as soon as the distorting effects of capital and private ownership are removed. That ideal utopia would be called communism. But capital and private ownership are difficult to eradicate (partly because of the class interests of the bourgeoisie, and partly because it is tricky to eradicate an idea), and so on the way to stateless communism a certain, ahem, 'temporary' intensification of the powers of the state will be necessary. In rousseau's expression, we may be 'forced to be free'.
You will have noticed, alas, that the soviet mass graves and gulags did not pave the way to a stateless utopia of all the virtues. Of course, you might account for this historically — any keeper of the true faith is likely to argue that communism hasn't been arrived at yet because the socialist stage was just not done properly. The most global form of this argument is the one that says that Russia was 'not ready' for socialism, because it had not passed through the stages of social organisation in the order proscribed by Marx (after observing Manchester and supposing it a model of the world). Note, by the by, that Marx didn't actually proscribe anything of the sort: he claimed, rather differently, that such an ordered progression of socio-economic systems is 'inevitable', to which claim the case of soviet Russia is, ironically, an obvious counter-example. But the argument that communism was not achieved because socialism was not done properly is dim for other reasons.
The parallels between the abrahamic religious story of the Fall and the Marxist one have been widely noted (rousseau is an intermediary). On both accounts there is one reason, one fact, that accounts for all the moral horrors, all sin, all vice, cruelty, injustice. On the one account, that eve ate the apple of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, on the other, if you like, that she took ownership that tree (means of production). On both accounts: but for this one mistake all in the garden would be perfect.
Now, the better sort of religious person takes the story of the fall as an instructive moral myth, which it might take daily devotion and a life of study to gain and practice the full meaning of. The meaning of the story is certainly not that we must watch out in case a serpent offers us an apple. Marxism, however, is a refuge for the literalist: there was literally one founding mistake, like eve taking the devil's gift, and whereas eve cannot be got to un-eat the apple, perhaps her daughters can feasibly be got to un-own the tree. Then the peace and order of the garden will return — all trees and apples being held in common: communism.
Don't you want to return to the garden? A very large number of people do. I particularly hoped for it in early adolescence.
Then it occurred to me, or rather I learned, that there might be lots of reasons why people were mean to each other besides ownership of the means of production. I rejected the idea that one need merely undo some original sin.
Rather as in certain kinds of religious zealotry, the fantastic otherworldliness of the communist utopia implies a dangerous contempt for the world as it is, and the people in it — people who precisely because they are real and complex appear to obstruct the path towards the beloved simplicity of the fantasy. Humanity needs to be made anew in the image of the viceless future, it is argued by the communist (much as by the zealot). What this means in practice is all the people you disapprove of may be murdered in the name of virtue — a licence for horror without end. You see the faith is that the utopian delights will arrive, but need not do so just yet.
Thus in the ideology of the old left:
Communism is the great 'not yet', the kingdom of heaven on earth.
Socialism is the necessary horror, a means justified by the end.
I leave out the finer post-leninist points, such as the diverting (and deadly) controversy over 'socialism in one country'.
I think it more worth saying that Clement Attlee, for instance, had none of the other-worldly ambitions implied by the leninist picture of socialism as a means to communism. He never pictured the state withering away, or justified current intervention in terms of that withering. He never imagined some reversal of the Fall. He was too english, insufficiently totalitarian in outlook, to plot the overcoming of any original sin. He just wanted people to have jobs and roofs over their heads. Attlee's Labour Party would not have qualified as Socialist under any leninist criteria, thank god. Thus the idea that the contrast between Lloyd George's liberals and Attlee's Labour is an ideological one is deeply mistaken.
David Robjant
(43) Nav asked:
What is Plato's Theory of Forms? What problems in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics is it intended to solve? Does it work?
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Plato's Theory of Forms is the view that, as opposed to the world of ordinary experience, which takes place in our physical world, there exists a world of real, stable, permanent, and immaterial Forms, Forms which are in some sense the cause of the objects of our ordinary experience. Plato intended the Forms to solve problems in epistemology in the following way. Our everyday statements include the use of general terms (like say, 'cat'). In order for our ordinary statements to be meaningful, we must know what these general terms signify or refer to. But to do this, Plato thought, we must do more than point to particular things. So, for instance, if we want to know what the general term 'cat' refers to, it will not do to point to 'Tom' in the Tom and Jerry cartoon, or to the stray cat down the street. These are merely particular examples or instances; they do not tell us what the general term 'cat' refers to, or what its meaning is. But all our sense experience gives us are examples, illustrations, or instances of general terms. So how can we ever come to know the definition of 'cat' or what it refers to while we are here, in the everyday, corporeal world? Plato believed that we all have knowledge of the Forms (for instance, the Form of Cat) within us (our disembodied souls were once acquainted with them while between physical lives), however, this knowledge is latent. What our sense experience does (seeing Jerry the cat and the cat down the street) is jar our memory of the Form of Cat, bringing to our conscious awareness information that is deep within us, of which we were not aware of until now.
The same goes for ethical terms. In Plato's Euthyphro, Socrates meets Euthyphro, a man who claims with certainty that persecuting his father for murder is the 'holy' thing to do. Socrates asks him what holiness is. Euthyphro responds that it is precisely what he is doing, going to court to have his father tried for murder. But this act, Socrates responds, is merely an instance or illustration of holiness, not the meaning of the general term 'holiness'. Euthyphro proves unable to supply this meaning. But how then, Socrates goes on to ask, do you know that this act you are about to commit is holy, if you do not know what the meaning of 'holiness' is? Again, Plato's Forms are intended to solve this difficulty. If we have access to (through recollection) the Form of Holiness, then we will be able to know what is required for some particular act to be holy. If we know this, then of course we will be able to tell whether or not Euthyphro's act is holy.
Does this work? I suppose that would depend first and foremost on whether or not one believed in the metaphysical claim that there is somewhere or other a Form or Ideal of Cat, immaterial, unique and unchanging, and with it, that our souls, in a non-corporeal state, become acquainted with these Forms. After all, we might simply wonder if we really need such an elaborate theory to help explain abstract ideas or general terms. Why might we not simply say that the general term 'cat' exists because we have had experience of cats and need a word to describe them. In this sense, general terms are not seen to exist eternally in a world of Forms, waiting to be discovered by the intellect alone, but are developed from our continual experience of physical items. It might be interesting to note that this is exactly what Aristotle, Plato's pupil, believed.
Kristian Urstad
(46) Jake asked:
What is the purpose of aesthetics? Why are we so moved by poetry, music and art? And why do our tastes of such things differ from one person to the next? None of these are necessarily essential for survival, yet we hold them in high regard in our life. Furthermore, our tastes for such things change over time. Can this be explained in a logical sense? Is man a rational animal to hold these things in such high esteem? How are these things pertinent to us in our day-to-day individual fights for survival we call life?
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I'm writing this to the accompaniment of Ministry of Sound's Clubbers Guide to Ibiza (2001). Usually I prefer silence when I work, but today I just felt the need for something with a beat. I've never clubbed and never holidayed in Ibiza, yet this music moves me. I can feel the beginnings of a smile twitching around the corners of my mouth. (Maybe the thought of bikini-clad beach goddesses has something to do with it too — but that's something we might talk about later.)
Jake's question about art is posed against the background of the human 'fight for survival' and the things that are 'essential for life'. It could be argued that he has stacked the deck right from the start. Why should we accept that the things we value must be measured against that austere standard?
What is the value of life? or survival? How many hours (or minutes?) of my life would I give up for the chance to listen to this great CD? Perhaps not that many, but still it's a fair question. Life is finite. We are all going to die some time. So it's legitimate to ask how far you theoretically value quality of life over quantity — if at all.
Jake's follow-up questions effectively answer his first question: 'What is the purpose of aesthetics?' The philosophy of art — or aesthetics — seeks to account for the value that the objects of art have for us. One of the challenges for aesthetics is that this value is not constant, either between different individuals, or for the same individual over time. To that extent, aesthetic value is fragile and evanescent.
One school of aesthetic thought that deserves to be reckoned with is that the objects of art have value for the pleasure they give us. What makes art different from other pleasures is that calling something 'art' implies a standard. Quality is important, not just quantity. It takes refined taste to discern the quality of pleasure.
To take the present example, I don't know a lot about dance music CDs but I know what I like. Glancing at the reviews for Clubbers Guide to Ibiza I can see that this two CD set is rated highly, although there were some criticisms. I couldn't write a review myself because I don't know enough about DJs and mixes and suchlike. My taste is not sufficiently 'refined'. But my ear is capable — if I strain to make the effort — of picking up on some of the points noted in the more critical reviews.
But hold on a minute. Isn't there a much more fundamental question that we still need to ask? Why does music — or a painting, or a novel, or any art object — give us pleasure? Surely it is a remarkable fact about human nature that we like certain combinations of sounds and dislike others; or that we enjoy looking at certain kinds of object; or that we are moved by the fate of characters in fiction.
Of the three remarkable facts, the pleasure of looking seems the least difficult to explain. To the question, 'Why is a man (woman) so moved by the sight of a beautiful woman (man)?', one can only answer, 'That's just the way human beings are.' So is man a rational animal to hold sex in such high esteem? A case could certainly be made that contemporary culture is over-obsessed by sex, but that is just a matter of relative values.
This approach to aesthetics seems to fly in the face of accounts (like the theory proposed by the gloomy Schopenhauer) which stress the 'disinterested' nature of the aesthetic response. However, I would accept that hedonism is least useful as an explanation of the intellectual content of the art work, the fact that the artist is not merely setting out to please but making a statement.
An example of what I mean would be Picasso's great painting Guernica which depicts the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. Picasso's painting is not meant to be pleasing, or easy to look at. Yet we value the immensely skilful means he has chosen to convey his message. We feel that we understand more about the tragedy of the bombing of Guernica in 1937 than we could have learned from news photographs, or a literal account. The painting gives shape and depth to our emotions. Surely, anything which gives shape and depth to human emotions enhances the quality of human life.
So my answer to Jake would be that if the quality of life matters at all, then art surely does matter.
Geoffrey Klempner
(51) Robert asked:
I have a couple questions relating to religion. One of the philosophers in 44/52 said that theology was not philosophy. There is also a philosophy of religion though, and many philosophers who have been profoundly religious, and they let that fact shape their philosophy. Can someone please elaborate then on the difference between the philosophy of religion and theology?
Also, I have had a hard time trying to come up with a definition for religion. Is religion separate from spirituality? If so how? Is it simply in the following of a dogma that something becomes religious?
Thanks for your time
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As the respondent of 44/52 I will answer the first part by expanding on what I think the main difference between philosophy and theology is. Philosophy as it has developed since Plato and especially since Descartes concerns itself with general issues such as the nature of reasoning, (logic), the nature of knowledge (epistemology), the nature of being (metaphysics) the nature of language and how we can live together (Ethics) (See 43/67 for further details) . It tries to do this in as dispassionate manner as possible without the use of faith or claims to divine revelation from either a personal experience of God, or from a sacred text such as the Bible or the Koran. As I have mentioned before (43/81) the idea that the answer to an ethical dilemma is pregiven would be an anathema to most modern philosophers. The aim of a lot of modern philosophy is to examine as far as possible, the arguments for and against a given position. Often in modern philosophy one is forced to see both sides of the argument without any definite conclusion being made and a lot of philosophy involves either pointing out flaws in other persons arguments or modifying a previously held position in the light of other arguments and it is an ongoing debate. By this dialectic it is hoped that a more accurate position can be found or at least bad arguments for or against a given position will be rejected. Whilst the existence or not of God forms one part of philosophy it does not concern itself just with this issue or other religious matters.
It is true that with the rise of scholasticism in the middle ages that theologians such as Anselm and Aquinas saw the matter in a different light, they adopted the slogan 'Fides Quarens Intellectum' i.e Faith informed by knowledge. Their starting point was their faith and they then tried to use philosophical reasoning to inform and enhance their faith. It would be fair to say that most theologians still adopt this maxim. There is of course a degree of overlap. However whilst theologians look to philosophical arguments to bolster their faith, philosophers try to avoid all issues of faith when developing their arguments. A philosopher would be interested in such arguments as to whether or not there is a first cause behind all things (the cosmological argument). Whether or not the idea of a perfect being must include its existence by necessity otherwise the being would not be perfect (the ontological argument if I understand it correctly). Or finally whether an argument from design is viable. Modern philosophy of religion in the light of developments in the philosophy of language, also deals with the nature of religious language and whether or not it refers.
This branch of philosophy is called philosophy of religion, by philosophers and natural theology by theologians. Kant in his critique of pure reason put a large nail in the coffin of natural theology when he showed that the traditional arguments for God, from Design, the cosmological argument and the ontological argument led to contradictory conclusions. Thus for Kant at least, the use of reason left the question of the existence of God as undecidable. In my own opinion then philosophical arguments for the existence of God are at best inconclusive.
However even if natural theology could prove the existence of God, many theologians would see this as a starting point, but they also have their own agenda, it would be a pretty poor conception of God, from a theologians point of view that didn't talk about his/her/its intervention in the world. In terms of traditional Christianity anything which didn't mention the alleged fall, and wasn't centred on the teachings or significance of Jesus Christ for redemption would be a pale reflection of what they see as the core of their message. Indeed there have been theologians such as Karl Barth who reject natural theology altogether. Given the problems associated with natural theology as outlined above one might have some sympathy, but to then claim a special type of revelation through either scripture or revelation would be a step to far for most philosophers. Again theologians of other religions would want to supplement the arguments from natural theology with their own perspective. However by doing this they move away from philosophy to theology and as each theologian is usually tied to a specific religion their arguments lack universality.
To get an idea of the contrast compare Hans Kung's two books 'On being a Christian' and 'Does God Exist'. On being a Christian concerns itself with Christian doctrine and what it might mean for today. Whereas 'Does God exist' concerns itself with philosophical arguments for and against the existence of God as they have raged down the centuries. Hans Kung comes to the conclusion, along with Pascal, that the God of the philosophers is not necessarily the God of theologians. To some extent the approach of a philosopher to the existence or otherwise of God is complementary to that of a theologian but both have quite different agendas.
As for the second part of your question (and what follows is my own opinion ), in general religion is tied to a particular institution, which wishes to see its own agenda adopted by the populace at large. In theocracies, which thank goodness we currently do not live in, (although some parts of America come pretty close), the teachings of a particular religion, are imposed on the whole population irrespective of whether or not they believe in the religion. There are vested interests in both the Catholic and Protestant churches which would like to see such theocracies imposed in the West. In my opinion a lot of what passes for the public face of religion is just bigotry (such as policies against gay people, the control of women and campaigns against the abortion laws). Again whilst it may be tolerated for priests and bishops to study theology, in general the church does not encourage its lay folk to do so. I for one think it scandalous that two hundred years after the development of Biblical criticism, people in the church for the most part are encouraged to treat the Bible or Koran as if it were the literal word of God rather than a piece of literature. Thus whereas a philosopher would treat the moral precepts of the Bible or Koran as rules of thumb subject to revision and would want to look at the arguments (if any) for the particular moral precept, religious institutions on the whole sees them as eternal unchangeable truths and as such do not consider the arguments for and against the particular ethical position.
On the other hand spirituality is more concerned with an individuals experience, a sense of awe and wonder at the world around us which is exploited by the Church and other religious institutions to persuade people that this is an experience of God. In my mind it would be better to describe spiritual experiences as aesthetic and not leading to God as there is no hidden agenda. For me the arts and sciences provide a much more satisfying method of fulfilling my deepest needs than anything I can get from institutionalised religion.
Christopher Finlay
(56) Rocky asked:
Today as you know we face lot of problems regarding different religions in the world. My view is that people should take what is good in every religion and be friendly with one another. Build a system of friendly religion or a unifyng religion. I would like to know which existential or postmodern philosopher upholds my idea so that I can do some research on it. Kindly help me.
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I'm sorry, Rocky, I'm not going to answer your question in the way that you would like. But that is not because I think that the very idea of 'friendly' religion where all would share the same faith is an absurdity — given what we in fact know about the world religions. Arguments from the facts, no matter how seemingly obvious, are always suspect in philosophy. From what is you cannot logically deduce what can or cannot be.
Perhaps on some planet somewhere — or perhaps on Earth 2000 years in the future — there is a universal religion such as you describe, where all human beings join together in joyful worship of the 'one true God', where there are no warring sects, no hostility, only friendship and love. (As it happens, that is not so very far away from what Catholics hope and believe. Perhaps in Islam too, the ideal state would be reached when there were no more 'infidels'.)
Let's just take that as read. From the tone of your question, I gather that you would find that picture attractive. I have no comment to make about that. What I want to do instead is look deeper into your question, picking up on the reference to existential thought which is the key here.
The first thought is whether there is something we can identify as the true 'core' of all religions which deserve the name. To have a religion is to worship something, which in turn implies that some entity is regarded as worthy of worship and indeed the only such entity. The name we give to this entity is 'God'.
Already this seems to jar. Zen Buddhists don't 'worship' a 'God'. Should Zen Buddhism therefore not be categorised as a 'religion' but only a 'philosophy'? or something else? But this looks like nit-picking, perhaps we can ignore semantics as a side issue and concentrate on the main question and see how it relates to existential thought.
There are two important ideas that one finds in existentialism. The first existentialist, the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, claimed that the religious attitude is characterised by a leap of faith. There cannot be 'evidence' for faith in this fundamental sense. Historical claims like the resurrection, or proofs of God offered by rationalist philosophers are irrelevant. One can go further and state that what this God is, is in an important sense irrelevant also. The content of faith is in the actions which it inspires. If your faith inspires you to imitate the example of Christ, then you would call yourself a 'Christian'.
The second important idea comes from Nietzsche. Stated very simply and brutally, Nietzsche's idea is that God is dead. Although this seems like as close as you could get to atheism, this thought inspired a major strain of 20th century Protestant theology. Just as we cannot find empirical or rational evidence for God, so nothing has value for us unless we value it. It is ultimately our responsibility to choose the kinds of values — the kind of life — that we find meaningful.
Both ideas come together in the thought that what is central to religion is negative rather than positive, not 'belief in God' as an entity or in values written on tablets of stone, but rather the rejection of false gods. Perhaps one of the most potent arguments for faith is that those who lack it are doomed to the futile pursuit of false gods.
Well, if that is so, then it seems to me that there is only one more step that needs to be taken. The only true religion is one which rejects all gods, period. Anything you say about your 'god', any belief or value you associate with him, or it, is false. As Wittgenstein remarked (in relation to a different question) 'a nothing would serve as well as a something about which nothing can be said'.
The children of Israel were aptly so-called. Jews today celebrate the escape from slavery in Egypt and later their leader Moses destroying the golden calf, two of the most important steps taken by the human race towards adulthood. Yet children they remained. (The same, of course, applies to Muslims and Christians for this is their story too.) So long as there remains an object of worship, however abstractly we conceive it, human beings will remain essentially children, fantasizing a family story of a loving parent and his obedient, or disobedient, offspring.
I am tempted to say, 'It is time to put aside childish things and take responsibility for our own existence.' Yet I wonder if that is true. I wonder whether human beings are, or will ever be capable of taking that step. It is easy enough to declare oneself an 'atheist', or 'against religion', much harder to embrace the full consequences of that existential choice.
Geoffrey Klempner
(58) Glenstein asked:
In Sec. 185 of Wittgenstein's investigations, he gives an example of a student who is being to taught to count by increments of two. He does fine up to 1000, but after this point, he starts incrementing by four, and we say to him 'look what you've done!'
The student thinks he did nothing wrong, and imagines that his task was to increment by two only up to 1000, and then increment by 4 up to 2000, by 6 up to 3000, etc. etc. I believe Wittgenstein's point was that, when you teach a 'rule' by giving examples of its proper use, you can fit any number of behaviors to that rule.
Well, I just completed a 'Mensa Fun Test', where they frequently ask 'what comes next in this series of numbers?'
One example gives the following series:
2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13,??
I got this correct, answering 17. 17 was the 'right' answer because this was a series of prime numbers.
But for a moment, I mistakenly thought 15 would come next because I thought I was looking at some sort of adding pattern, not unlike Wittgenstein's student. First you add one, then you add two, then you add two again, then you add four, and then add two again.
In retrospect, I don't think there is any justification for answering of 15, even if I had established some coherent adding pattern. The fact that these are primes is certainly more obvious. But, would I actually be wrong to answer 15? It vaguely seems like there is something ridiculous about insisting that 15 could be right, because it accords with some series that was a legitimate alternative to the prime number series.
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Well first I have to say that you have completely misunderstood the point of Wittgenstein's remarks and you have misunderstood the nature of intelligence tests.
Wittgenstein emphasized that his remarks only have meaning in the context of the particular philosophical problems that he was discussing, in this case what philosophers say happens when we can be said to be following a rule.
You are not meant to take any of his remarks in isolation or to imagine that they mean anything outside of philosophy. You cannot apply them to psychology and Wittgenstein didn't intend them to be used in this way.
Now to intelligence tests, people often mistakenly think that intelligence tests are based on questions which have a right or wrong answer and they feel entitled to argue that surely this other answer is equally valid.
Intelligence tests are never based on the idea that one answer is the right answer to a question. They are based on the idea that intelligent people give this answer to this question while less intelligent people give other answers.
You need to study in detail the history of how intelligence tests evolved and how they are constructed. There are many reasons to criticise intelligence tests but yours isn't a good reason.
Shaun Williamson
(62) Don asked:
I have been trying to educate myself about Mtheory (i.e. the potential theory of everything) and I was wondering if there has been any work that tries to make the connection between consciousness and a theory of everything. What are the philosophical cosmology implications of interjecting consciousness( or mind) into the discussion. I recently read J.r. Searle's 'Mind' and began to wonder if matter responds to consciousness and if matter and energy are related, does consciousness cause energy and matter. If so, what are the implications for Mtheory? Any feedback would be appreciated. I am a psychologist by training but interested in the big questions. Thanks,
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I think there is a danger here that you are being deceived by media hype. There is no theory of everything and no one is looking for such a theory.
In physics the phrase 'theory of everything' is used to refer to an, as yet unknown, theory that would provide a unified explanation of the four forces that affect matter. At present physicists have two main theories to explain things, quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of Relativity. Quantum mechanics deals very well with the atomic and sub atomic aspects of matter, Relativity deals with the large scale things such as space, time, planets, stars, galaxies, quasars and black holes.
The four forces are:
1. the electro-magnetic force
2. the strong nuclear force
3. the weak nuclear force
4. gravity
Quantum mechanics deals very well with 1,2 and 3 but so far does not provide a framework for understanding gravity. So at present physicists are searching for a sub-atomic particle known as the Higg's boson (which has unfortunately been nicknamed the god particle). If they find the Higg's boson then this will help to incorporate gravity into quantum mechanics and will make a 'theory of everything' possible.
However in the background another theory is lurking that may replace both Relativity and quantum mechanics. It is called string theory. At present physicists are making precise measurements of the orbit of the moon to see if the results are more in accordance with the predictions of Relativity of string theory.
However none of this has anything to do with consciousness, physicists aren't interested in consciousness. People who try to spin fanciful theories connecting consciousness and quantum mechanics are not scientists. They are talking nonsense.
So you wonder if matter responds to consciousness. The answer to this is no it doesn't and it can't. My body is made of matter, that is atoms and sub atomic particles. I am conscious. I control my body. My consciousness doesn't control my body. I have a mind. My mind doesn't control my body, I control my body.
People have material bodies and people control bodies, unless some pathological condition makes this impossible. Minds and consciousness are not the sorts of things that have bodies or control bodies or interact with bodies. Once we start dealing with complex abstract concepts it is easy to weave all sorts of improbable fictions around them and difficult to maintain a clear idea of the differences between all these things.
Shaun Williamson
(65) Louie asked:
Is it possible that there could be a overwhelming stream of information, via the five senses, that bombards us throughout our daily routine; this stream cannot all be deciphered/ processed, so eventually the subconscious brain acts as a filter. Filtering out the "useless" and processing the "useful". And that all humans are innately desensitized to their environment?
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Bertrand Russell's collaborator A.N. Whitehead, at the beginning of his magnum opus Process and Reality comments that human beings habitually 'perceive by the method of difference'. We notice an elephant in the room because an elephant is not always there. Whitehead is speaking figuratively. If an elephant followed you everywhere you'd still be able to 'notice' it whenever you wanted to! But Whitehead is talking about general and structural features of our experience, the kind that interest the philosopher engaged in metaphysical inquiry.
The inhabitants of Alex Proyas' Dark City (1998) never think to ask themselves, 'When was the last time you remember doing something in the day time?' Could we be like them? Might there be something in our world, and not just in its general or structural features that we fail to see because our senses are overloaded and we've become desensitized?
This is one of the perennial themes of radical left politics, the idea that we are living in a state of perpetual 'false consciousness', our minds numbed into paralysis by insidious propaganda. If you're interested in science fiction, then Dark City or The Matrix provide models for all sorts of fanciful conspiracy theories.
Anything might be the case, in some possible world, if you are prepared to stretch your imagination far enough. But that's not what the question is about. The question is about how things might be for all we know, that is to say, how they might be in the actual world, right now, and we would never know the difference.
This question grips me. I think I know my world. I'm pretty confident that I have a fairly useful grasp of science, politics, history, geography — the kind of stuff you'd call 'general knowledge'. But what if I'm wrong? What if there's something really huge that I'm missing. As I said, this isn't about science fiction or conspiracy theories, it's about reality, 'how things are right now'.
I don't have an answer. It's an 'unknown unknown'. I don't have the parameters for making a judgement about what is here, all around, that my senses and my intellect don't notice because it's all around, swamping my capacity to sift for information.
Good question, Louie.
Geoffrey Klempner
(66) Don asked:
I have been trying to educate myself about Mtheory (i.e. the potential theory of everything) and I was wondering if there has been any work that tries to make the connection between consciousness and a theory of everything. What are the philosophical cosmology implications of interjecting consciousness( or mind) into the discussion. I recently read J.r. Searle's 'Mind' and began to wonder if matter responds to consciousness and if matter and energy are related, does consciousness cause energy and matter. If so ,what are the implications for Mtheory? Any feedback would be appreciated. I am a psychologist by training but interested in the big questions.
============
I can only give my opinion as a practising physicist who has no real knowledge of M-theory, but I really feel that there is no connection between consciousness and M-theory. It is difficult to see M-theory as a 'real theory' of physics for the following reasons:
1) There is no definitive formulation of the theory. 2) It seems to be more of a conjecture than anything else. 3) Most crucially it is not clear that there exists any real connection between the theory and what can be measured in the lab. Thus until such time as it can produce any quantitative predictions it is to use Dirac's damning phrase 'Not even wrong.'
These points are developed at great length in the book 'Not Even Wrong' by Peter Woit amongst other books. One thing that a lot of people find difficult to accept is the fact, that despite the hype, so called 'theories of everything' do not really have much application in the 'real world'. To solve most day to day problems in engineering or physics, classical physics still forms the basis of much of current design work. Designers of radar such as myself use classical electromagnetism as the basis of how radar systems work, quantum effects, if any are so small as not to affect the sorts of phenomenon we are interested in. Thus it is not clear that looking for a solution to a phenomenon such as consciousness which is a macroscopic phenomenon, from say the latest developments in string theory has any merit or relevance.
However the question still arises what is the relationship if any between consciousness and physics. This is a matter of controversy as I'm sure you are well aware. In fairness I shall outline some of the main areas where the link has been made and then give my reasons for rejecting or accepting some of them.
1) The theory of quantum measurement as formulated by Von-Neumann and developed by London and Bauer. Quantum states describe the possibilities open to a system, the mathematical function describing this is called a wave function. However when a system can be in a number of states (eg an electron can have two possible spin states) the wave function describing this is a superposition of both of these states. However the electron is only ever observed in one of these states when a measurement is performed. Thus the wave function has collapsed into one of the possible states describing the system. The resolution of this problem which seems to be an extra ingredient to add to quantum mechanics is called the quantum theory of measurement and the question is what is the significance of the so called collapse of the wave function. One view, which seems to be the one favoured by popular books, is that it is human consciousness that is ultimately responsible for collapsing the wave function. This 'California' interpretation as I call it really stretches credulity. There are a number of responses.
a) Denial that the wave function collapse is a real event those who favour the statistical approach to quantum mechanics (such as myself) do not believe that the wave function is anything more than a heuristic device for calculating probabilities, thus the wave function should really be called a probability state vector and not a wave function.
b) However even if the wave function collapse is a real process, it is not clear that consciousness plays a part in quantum measurement. Niels Bohr was adamant that long before the results of a measurement took place an irreversible amplification of microscopic events occurred (eg for a photon hitting a photographic plate) before a human observer observed the results. He/She certainly does not create events by an act of observation as the California interpretation would claim.
c) Finally however there exist other interpretations of quantum mechanics such as David Bohm's or Everrett's Many worlds interpretation which attempt to remove the notion of wave function collapse from quantum mechanics.
Thus it would seem, despite some claims in the literature, that wave function collapse, if it is a real process has little to do with consciousness.
2) The application of quantum gravity to consciousness. Roger Penrose in his books 'The Emperors New Mind and 'Shadows of the mind has claimed that quantum gravity is needed to 'collapse the wave function'. However in the absence of any definitive formulation of quantum gravity, it is not clear that this is any more than speculation.
3) The use of chaos theory, to my mind, this seems the most promising (if not the most sexy) application of physics to the problem of consciousness. Chaotic systems are essentially unstable classical systems in that it just takes a small change in the variables to produce completely different behaviour. However within the unstable environment there are islands of stability. Work by such people as W. J. Freeman (see link below) has spent a long time investigating these phenomenon and there does seem to be strong evidence that chaotic phenomenon enable the brain to jump from one state to the other and is necessary for say perception in the form of smell. Whilst this is not a fully fledged theory of consciousness, the fact that the results of such an approach are able to be tested empirically makes this approach much more promising and well defined than the other approaches outlined above.
As a final point, whilst all this speculation is interesting, even if we could have a convincing explanation of consciousness in terms of the latest physics, it is not clear that would that solve the problem of consciousness in a way which would satisfy our own intuitions. A vexed problem is the problem of qualia i.e its all very well having say a good general understanding of the physics of how we perceive colour but this general description would not necessarily capture the subjective aspect of colour as I myself perceive it. So in conclusion it may well be that physics is able to help us understand some aspects of consciousness better but I remain sceptical that it will capture all the aspects of consciousness we require for a full understanding.
Further reading
A general survey of the problem of quantum measurement, from someone who is currently championing the Everrett interpretation is provided here.
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~lina0174/philphys.doc
Freeman's work on the relevance of chaos theory to understanding the brain is accessible via this web site
http://sulcus.berkeley.edu
I suggest starting with the paper Consciousness Intentionality and Causality accessible by clicking on the WJF Neuroscience Articles button on the web site above.
I have given some quite sceptical comments about the relationship between quantum mechanics and consciousness, for a more positive view see eg
Danah Zohar The Quantum Self: Human Nature and Consciousness Defined by the New Physics
Christopher Finlay
(73) Jake asked:
What is the purpose of aesthetics? Why are we so moved by poetry, music and art? And why do our tastes of such things differ from one person to the next? None of these are necessarily essential for survival, yet we hold them in high regard in our life . Furthermore, our tastes for such things change over time. Can this be explained in a logical sense? Is man a rational animal to hold these things in such high esteem? How are these things pertinent to us in our day-to-day individual fights for survival we call life ?
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I can't resist referring you to your namesake in a novel by the name of 'Under the Net', by one Iris Murdoch. That Jake has an argument with a certain Hugo. Hugo, rather like you perhaps, finds our addiction to myths and images and theories and all of what you might call 'art' something irrational and despicable, something that turns us, indeed, into liars. Jake responds that myth and theory and image are how we understand the world, and that 'art' therefore is reason.
In fact, with your worries about the moral and epistemic status of art, I can't think of any publication by Iris Murdoch that you wouldn't find touching on your concern. But I would recommend you get hold of the collection 'existentialists and mystics' first, and head first for the script of her play 'Art and Eros'. That is, after reading 'Under the net'.
By the by, I think it is quite a common theory with those interested in such matters that the development of Art by the human species (cave paintings, carvings, etc) is fairly closely connected to our remarkable survival. After all, fangs winter fur and deadly speed we do not have. What do we have? Art and language. The argument then will be about whether there might be some kind of language where no art is, and how useful that would be. George Orwell reminded us that talking good sense, and understanding what you yourself are saying, is closely connected with mastery of the lively 'concrete' image — attempts to do without it come out with garbage. A certain way of looking at science suggests to us here an area of talk without art and imagery: but the suggestion is wholly misleading. Think of Einstein and his trains. Imagery is a crucial part of thinking, that is to say of reason, at every level.
Tastes change, you say, and I think you are implicitly arguing that there is no disputing about taste, and that therefore there is no knowing or truth where there is taste, and art must be irrational. Well, as someone once said, so far from there being no disputing about taste, I suggest that taste is the only thing worth disputing about. A good scientific theory will be a beautiful one. Ugliness goes with accumulations of ad hoc explanations and work-arounds, beauty with a nice simple clear picture of the thing that can be put to work with ease.
So much for art. As far as the point of aesthetics is concerned, well, there you have me.
David Robjant
(75) Frank asked:
Discuss the difference between versions of utilitarianism that regard 'pleasure' as the unit of utility, and those that take it to be 'desire-satisfaction'.
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Utilitarianism combines two elements. The first is consequentialism, the view that one should act so as to produce the best consequences . The second element is the view — sometimes known as 'welfarism' — that goodness and badness (of the consequences of actions) is to be defined in terms of the well-being of human (or, in some versions, sentient) beings.
The difference between the versions of utilitarianism which focus on pleasure and those which focus on desire-satisfaction rests on a different conception of human well-being. At its heart is the fact that hedonists (those who focus on pleasure, or happiness) believe that ultimately well-being depends upon the quality of one's experiences or mental states. Desire-satisfaction theories, on the other hand, hold that states of the world — i.e. those which satisfy our desires — have value.
The position is in practice more complicated than this. There are different variants of both hedonism and desire-satisfaction theories, and some theories attempt to straddle the divide in one way or another. For example, many desire-satisfaction theories allow that pleasure and pain also have value in their own right, and one theory (see Sumner book below) defines well-being in terms of happiness, with the requirement that it be 'authentic', which implies a relationship between the subject's mental states and certain relevant states of the world.
The main challenge to the hedonistic approach is based on the commonsense intuition that the way the world goes does make a difference to our well-being, even if we are unaware of it. This is brought out in thought-experiments such as Robert Nozick's 'Experience Machine' — a machine which will provide any subjective experience we could possibly wish for. Desire-satisfaction theories, on the other hand, have to cope with cases where the satisfaction of desires appears not to enhance our well-being, and also with those where something not desired beforehand does appear to do so.
Despite their differences, both hedonistic and desire-satisfaction theories of well-being are regarded as 'subjective', since both make well-being ultimately dependent (albeit in different ways) on some or other of the individual's subjective mental states: pleasures and pains, desires and aversions. Other theorists — some of whom are also utilitarians — reject subjective theories of well-being altogether and seek to define it in more 'objective' ways. Since the notion of well-being plays a part in many different kinds of moral theory, the debate between hedonistic, desire-satisfaction and objective accounts of well-being has an importance that goes well beyond utilitarianism.
Some useful reading beyond the classic utilitarian texts:
James Griffin: Well-Being, Clarendon Press 1986
Wayne Sumner: Welfare, Happiness & Ethics, Oxford University Press 1996
Fred Feldman: Pleasure and the Good life , Oxford University Press 2004
Tim Taylor
(93) Jim asked:
A child once asked me what 'time' was...and I was stumped...That boy made my life nightmare of reading...and I am still stuck for a good answer.
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Time is a sequence of relations, specifically the temporal relations that have terms labeled 'before' and 'after'. For example, 'I was born before my sister,' where terms of the 'before' are 'I' and 'my sister.' This is not a great deal of help unless you know more about relations, and relations have given philosophers difficulty for all of recorded history — so much so that many major philosophers have denied their existence altogether.
One of the problems is the question of whether they can be perceived or not. Consider the relation 'on', when your shoe is on your foot: you must be able to perceive this 'on', since otherwise how could you know whether or not the shoe was on your foot? But although you can see, touch, etc. both the shoe and your foot, you cannot see, touch, etc. the relation on: it has no colour, hardness, taste, etc., no perceptible properties at all, in which case how can you perceive it?
Another problem is that relations seem to have an inferior kind of existence to concrete properties: if you take your shoe off your foot the relation on ceases to exist, while the shoe and your foot continue to exist, and this suggests the unreality of relations. A third problem is their extravagant multiplication. Consider the relation 'similar to,' as in 'this is similar to that.' We can say that the 'this' is a term of the relation 'similar to,' and so is the 'that.' So there seem to be two more relations, two 'terms of.' And these have two terms each, and so on ad infinitum.
(If you ever did any set theory in the New Math, you may remember that a relation is defined these days as a subset of a Cartesian product, and the subset is defined by means of a polyadic predicate. Superficially this solves these problems, by making relations be logical constructs, out of their terms. But this is pretty useless. A Cartesian product can only be defined by means of prior relations, such as set membership and subset, and 'polyadic predicated' is only another name for a relation.)
My own view (although many philosophers will disagree with this) is that relations are genuine, real existents but that they are abstract entities — which is why they have no concrete properties such as colour or hardness. And their existence is not inferior because they come into existence — they emerge — just as easily as they go out of it. And, thirdly, some relations have nominal existence only, including those that multiply extravagantly; thus 'term of' is not a real relation, so does not multiply except ion in language. You might like to consider questions such as 'What are space, causation, change, process, identity, similarity and difference?' They are all relational. I am sorry if all of this is somewhat technical, but if you can handle that you may want to look at my book 'Relation Philosophy of Mathematics, Science, and Mind.' You can download it for free from www.sharebooks.ca.
Helier Robinson
(100) Scott asked:
Who is more intelligent?
A. A person who knows everything. is A (Impossible?) Doesn't it depend on your environment? Student asked this question, I don't have a response for this HELP!! right and wrong?
B. A person who know he doesn't know everything.
I am teaching world history and my students attained this question from a Socrates quote: 'I am the wisest man in the world, for I know one thing, and that is I know Nothing.' What is your opinion? and Do you mind if I share it with my students?
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Well, (B) sets the bar pretty low! Nobody knows everything, and surely pretty much everybody knows this about themselves. (Nobody apart from me knows how many pens there are on my desk right now, for example. Actually my desk is quite messy so not even I know that.) You'd really have to be quite dense, or perhaps deluded, to think you know everything! I suppose someone who just hadn't even considered whether or not they know everything might count as someone who fails to satisfy (B). But I'd say that they're just lacking in imagination rather than lacking in intelligence.
I'm not sure whether (A) is strictly possible. This is a big issue in the philosophy of religion — is omniscience really possible? (Can God know what it's like to stub your toe or have a hangover?) But it's certainly impossible for mere human beings! Nobody can know the full decimal expansion of pi, because it's infinite. And in practice, there are lots of things that nobody will ever know. (How many water molecules are there in the glass on my desk? Exactly how many hairs were there on the head of the person who first uttered the word 'cat'?)
So your question, as stated, seems a bit redundant, because human being in fact does or ever will, or indeed could, know everything. Maybe some hypothetical infinite super-being could know everything. I guess such a being would be more intelligent than someone who knows they don't know everything, just because, as I said, that sets the bar so low.
A more down-to-earth question in the same ballpark, though, would be whether knowing lots of stuff (not everything!) makes you more intelligent than appreciating that your knowledge of the world is in fact extremely limited (which, for all of us, it is). I'd say not. Being able to learn and recall lots of facts isn't the same as being intelligent. (Not that I am going to try and give you a definition of intelligence!)
Go ahead and share with your students if you think it'll help!
Helen Beebee
The British Philosophical Association
http://www.bpa.ac.uk
(101) Jim asked:
what is the philosophical definition of 'time'? It may seem simple but try to give an answer to a bright 10 year old boy..
He can read a clock...He wants a simple explanation of 'time' if there is one...I have come to the belief there isn't
Geographically, us rounding the sun, is only a definition of the measure of time...
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You are right, Jim, to distinguish between a measure of time and time itself. And you will have noticed that a creative refusal to make exactly this distinction is one element in GK's delightful answer.
His thought that clocks are to time as a ruler is to length helps is to an image, for which we are grateful, and with that the image strikes one as somehow explanatory — but how explanatory is it? If time were indeed just whatever it is that a clock measures, there would not be nothing to time but hours, minutes and seconds. Yet there is some 'before' the second hand moves, and some 'after', just as there are innumerable lengths fractionally larger than 2 inches, or any other measured length. If this is so for any measurement of anything at all, why would one confuse the measure with the measured?
Because knowing the time or place accurately sometimes matters we find ourselves forced to refine and improve our measuring devices (our digital stop watches, vernier scales and micrometers) in pursuit of a reality that lies beyond the names we have for the days of the week, or even beyond the hours of the day. Week next friday will not do for some purposes, and sometime after ten won't do for others. That such refinement of our terminology may be necessary, or even possible, shows the existence of some reality outside our current apparatus — or we would still be stuck with the sand clock.
But if this refinement is understood as a pursuit of perfect accuracy, it must go with the reminder that a final arrival is something utterly inconceivable. We invented the hour, then the minute, and the second, and now nano-seconds. When the hour was the latest invention, no-one was tempted to take the measure for the real thing, and to imagine and understand time we flew to other images, of flowing rivers, water under the bridge, birds in flight, grim reapers and so on. Now the better measuring devices can tell one fraction of a second from the next, and we are tempted to think that we've finally caught the thing itself in our clockish net — for surely there can be no further fractions? But naturally there can. And as for catching time itself in our measuring, well, on that point we have, for all our nano-seconds, come not one jot onwards from the sand-clock. An infinity of future refinement lies before us now, just as surely as it did then.
Another point obscured by the thought that time is to a clock as length is to a ruler, is that time has a direction, and cannot be traversed or completed in any number of directions, as with a line on a piece of paper. Oh yes, I know that time has been called the fourth dimension, and that understanding it so makes some equations in physics come out nicely. How pretty for the physicists. But in so 'refining' the concept of time physicists have in fact exchanged that concept for something else entirely. What we mean by 'time' is an irrevocable, continuous and involuntary going forward, something essential to the character of all human experience whether spatial or not. 'Months went by' as Seagoon used to say, 'I couldn't stop them.' Here we are back with images. The arrow in flight. The river flowing irresistibly under the bridge. These metaphors are truer to time than any clock or algebra.
David Robjant
