ISSUE 113 AP APRIL / MAY 2016
UK £3.75 USA $7.99 CANADA $8.99
Philosophy Now a magazine of ideas
Tegmark Is the universe made of mathematics? Intoxicating ideas Philosophy, drugs and cocktails Adamson Meat is Murder
independent thinking
NEWREALISM ALISM Enter En ter the discount discount ccode ode NEWRE att the check a checkout!* out!* 20% OFF
www.bloomsbury.com www.bloomsbu ry.com
intr rooduction to
from polity
new r rea ealism
politybooks.com
b y M aur i zio Fer r ar is
9781472595942 | Dec 2014 £14.99 | $24.95 | PB
@BloomsburyPhilo @Bloomsbur yPhilo
Ultimate Questions Bryan Magee Cloth $16.95
In this original new book, German philosopher Markus Gabriel tackles the big questions of what exists and what it means to exist, presented in a way to appeal to the general reader. Through a series of witty thought experiments and philosophical arguments he demonstrates the importance of a questioning mind and brings us to the conclusion that the world itself does not exist. Ambitious and clever, yet highly accessible, this is a book with consequences not just for philosophy but for the way we look at the world. HB: 9780745687568 | £20 | June 2015
TToo order order,, freephone John Wiley & Sons Ltd on
The crowning achievement to a distinguished philosophical career, Ultimate Questions is a deeply personal meditation on the meaning of life and the ways we should live and face death. “Fluently written and beautifully clear.” —John Cottingham, author of Philosophy of Religion
0800 243407
politybooks.com
See our E-Books at press.princeton.edu
Philosophy Now ISSUE 113 Apr/May 2016 Philosophy Now , 43a Jerningham Road, Telegrap Telegraph h Hill, London SE14 5NQ United Kingdom Tel. Tel. 020 7639 7639 7314 7314
[email protected] philosophynow.org Editor-in-Chief Rick Lewis Carta Guest Editor Manuel Carta Steinbauer,, Grant Bartley Bartley Editors Anja Steinbauer Digital Editor Bora Dogan Graphic Design Grant Bartley, Katy
Baker, Anja Steinbauer Book Reviews Editor Teresa Teresa Britton Britton Wartenberg rg Film Editor Thomas Wartenbe Marketing Manager Sue Roberts Administration Ewa Stacey, Katy Baker
EDITORIAL & NEWS 4 Keeping It Real Rick Lewis Real Rick Lewis 5 News in Brief
NEW REALISM O D L O B M I C R
A E P P E S I U
G Y B
R E T A
W
Advertising Team
Jay Sanders, Sanders, Ellen Ellen Stevens jay.sander jay.sanders@phil s@philosophy osophynow now.org .org UK Editorial Board
Rick Lewis, Anja Steinbauer, Bora Dogan, Grant Bartley US Editorial Board
New Realism Pages Pages 6-17
Dr Timothy J. Madigan (St John Fisher College), Prof. Charles Echelbarger, Prof. Raymond Pfeiffer, Prof. Massimo Pigliucci (CUNY - City College), Prof. Teresa Teresa Britton Britton (Eastern (Eastern Illinois Illinois Univ Univ.) .) Contributing Editors
Alexander Alexander Razin (Moscow (Moscow State State Univ.) Univ.) Laura Roberts (Univ. of Queensland) David Boersema (Pacific University) UK Editorial Advisors
Piers Benn, Constantine Sandis, Gordon Giles, Paul Gregory, John Heawood US Editorial Advisors
Prof. Raymond Angelo Belliotti, Toni Vogel Vogel Carey, Carey, Prof. Walter Walter SinnottSinnott Armstrong, Armstrong, Prof. Prof. Harvey Siegel Siegel Librarian, Arcimboldo Cover Image The Librarian, Printed by Graspo CZ, a.s., Pod Sternberkem 324, 76302 Zlin, Czech Republic UK newstrade distribution through: Comag Specialist Division, Tavistoc Tavistockk Works, Works, Tavistock Rd, West West Drayton, Drayton, Middlesex Middlesex UB7 UB7 7QX Tel. Tel. 01895 01895 433800 433800
Socrates & Zen Meditate Meditate on this. this. Page 34
The opinions opinions expressed expressed in this this magazine magazine do not necessarily reflect the views of the editor or editorial board of Philosophy Now .
Shop p.46 Subscriptions p.47
18 The Use of Embryos Embryos Elizab Elizabeth eth Hemsle Hemsleyy consi consider derss the the ethic ethicss of a new new gene genetic tic techni technique que 22 On Moral Arguments Against Recreational Drug Use Rob Lovering Lovering spot tests tests the arguments arguments 27 On the Philosophy of Conservatism Musa al-Ghar al-Gharbi bi briefs briefs us on various various species species of conser conservativ vativee 28 Philosophy & Cocktails Robin Small Small concocts a charming charming cocktail cocktail of cogitations cogitations 32 The Universe Universe Is Made Of Mathematics Mathematics Sam Woolfe sees how Max Tegmark’s words and worlds add up 34 Socrates & Zen Geoff Sheehan looks at Socratic philosophy through a Buddhist lens 44 Film: America n Psycho Film: American Matthew Matthew Gildersl Gildersleeve eeve psychoa psychoanalys nalyses es one American American psycho psycho philosophically philosophically,, using the theories theories of Jacques Jacques Lacan Lacan 48 Book: Anxiety Book: Anxiety by Jacques Lacan reviewed by Peter Caws 50 Book: Walter Benjamin and the Media by Jaeho Kang reviewed by Terri Murray
REGULARS
Australi Australian an newstr newstrade ade distr distribut ibution: ion: Gordon & Gotch pty Level 2, 9 Rodborough Road French’s Forest, NSW 2086 Tel. Tel. 02 02 9972 9972 8800 8800
ISSN 0961-5970
GENERAL ARTICLES
REVIEWS
U.S. & Canadian bookstores through: Disticor Magazine Distribution Services 695 Westney Road S., Unit 14, Ajax, Ontari Ontario o L1S 6M9 6M9 Tel. Tel. (905) (905) 619 619 6565 6565
Philosophy Now is published by Anja Publicatio Publications ns Ltd
6 Interview: Markus Gabriel Anja Anja Steinb Steinbaue auerr asks asks him him ‘why ‘why the the worl worldd does does not not exist’ exist’ 11 Interview: Maurizio Ferraris Manuel Manuel Carta Carta gets gets real real with with this modern modern metaph metaphysic ysician ian 14 Introduction ction to New Realism Realism Introduction to Introdu to Introduction Fintan Fintan Neylan Neylan explains Ferr Ferraris’ aris’ss New Realism Realism in more depth depth 17 Interview: Sarah De Sanctis Manuel Manuel Carta Carta gets gets a transl translator ator’’s take take on philoso philosophy phy
Intoxicating Thinking Drugs p.22, Cocktails, p.28
25 Brief Lives: Pierre Hadot Lives: Pierre Hadot Thomas Dylan Daniel on philosophy and life á la Français 31 Philosophy Then: Meat Murder Then: Meat is Murder Peter Peter Adamson Adamson chews chews over ancient ancient Indian Indian vegetarian vegetarianism ism 37 Question of the Month: What’s Your Your Best Advice/Wisdom? You’re well advised to read readers’ answers to this question 40 Letters to the Editor 52 Talli Talliss in Wonde Wonderlan rland: d: The ‘P’ Word Raymond Raymond Tallis wonder wonderss if philosophy philosophy is about about making making progress progress
FICTION 54 Epiphany Kimberley Kimberley Martinez’ Martinez’ss hero has one, momentarily momentarily April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 3
Editorial
Keeping It Real
H
ere at Philosophy Now Now we try to perform a whole set of disparate tasks, often simultaneously, rather like a seal juggling coloured balls while also honking a horn with its nose and riding a bicycle. We endeavour to present the best philosophy articles we can, for your edification and astonishment. We also delve into the history of philosophy, exploring the ideas of some of the most intriguing thinkers of the past 2,500 years, including the crazy ones. We also investigate some of the great philosophical problems such as the foundations of ethics, the nature of consciousness and – two months ago – the existence of free will. But on top of all all of this, we keep a weather eye out for significant new trends and developments in philosophy, wherever they take place and then report them to our discerning worldwide audience (that’s you). For instance, instance, we have previously published published articles on disjunctivism disjunctivism and on experimental philosophy by leading exponents of those approaches. And in the issue you are holding in your hands right now, we are covering a new philosophical movement from Italy and Germany that goes by the name New Realism. New Realism is this year’s hot trend among idea-fanciers, particularly those in Germany and Italy. It’s mainly the brainchild of (in no particular order) Prof. Maurizio Ferraris of the University of Turin and Prof. Markus Gabriel of the University of Bonn. By By happy coincidence – no, away with this false modesty, it was through hard work and bold planning! – the current issue issue features illuminating illuminating interviews with both of these influential influential contemporary thinkers. thinkers. This means that much of our New Realism section consists of conversations with the very people who are pioneering this approach. This is cutting-edge philosophy from the horses’ mouths. I would like to particularly thank Manuel Carta for his initiative and hard work in bringing this issue together, and for conducting two of the interviews within it. I would also like to express my gratitude to Sarah de Sanctis, translator of several books by Ferraris, for her help and advice, and for giving us her own thoughts in her conversation with Manuel. An old joke about the Holy Roman Roman Empire goes that it wasn’t wasn’t Holy and it wasn’t wasn’t Roman. So what about the New Realism? Is it New? Is it Real? Luckily, at least arguably it is both. Firstly, this isn’t the first time a bunch of philos have described themselves as ‘New Realists’. As you’ll read in Anja Steinbauer’s interview with Gabriel, an earlier group did so about a hundred years ago. Nonetheless the new New Realists are undoubtably much newer than the old New Realists. Secondly, what is a realist? In everyday speech, I’ve been told, it means any person sensible enough to realize that there is no 4
Now ● April/May Philosophy Now April/May 2016
market for a philosophy magazine (compare with ‘idealist’). But in terms of philosophical positions, a realist is somebody who believes that the things we perceive are really, really, objectively, objectively, there. So a moral realist is somebody who thinks moral values have a real existence independent of us. A number realist is a mathematician who thinks numbers really exist. (See article on Max Tegmark Tegmark in this issue). If you believed in the Easter Bunny, that would make you an ‘Easter Bunny realist’. So what do New Realists believe in? New Realism springs from the tradition of hermeneutics, that led through 20th century Continental philosophy philosophy to, eventually, Derrida’s claim that our world is constructed like a piece of literature and there is “nothing outside of the text”. In reaction to this, the New Realists say that while society and its institutions and customs are indeed socially constructed, external physical objects aren’t, and resist our efforts to reshape them. This sounds suspiciously suspiciously like common sense. Should we merely be cheering because these thinkers, despite being philosophically born in the cave dug by Derrida, have now climbed up to the light? Or do they have more to teach us? It seems they do. For starters, both Ferraris and Gabriel claim that the meaning of an object is not in people’s heads but resides in the object itself. It is ‘real’, not subjective. Perhaps if there is ever a New Realist ethics it will be a form of moral realism. How else does New Realism differ from other forms of realism? A big clue comes from the title Markus Gabriel has chosen for his book: Why The World Does Not Exist. This is an unusual choice of title for any book purporting to advocate realism. Gabriel thinks that ‘the world’ is not real, but that individual objects (chairs, trees, even unicorns) are real. This is why we picked for the cover of this issue a painting called The Librarian by Renaissance painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593), who specialised in constructing portrait heads out of objects. Does the Librarian exist, or is he a social construct out of individual elements that themselves have an existence independent of society? This type of question ties into some current debates in physics (if not in Library Studies). For instance, do exotic particles like the Higgs Boson exist independently of us, or do we find them because our best theories lead us to expect them? In our everyday lives too there are questions about what is independently real and what is socially constructed. Houses are literally ‘socially constructed’ but seem pretty solid too. What about bank loans, loans, currency, currency, countries? In the online world, in social media and virtual virtual reality – to what extent are the people and things we encounter real? How can we know? Above all, what exactly do we mean by real? Read Read on!
• Umberto Eco, novelist and a nd philosopher phi losopher,,
dies at 84 • Virtue in Virtual Reality • Universe “full of bubbles” • News reports by Anja Steinbauer. Umberto Eco (5 Jan 1932 1932 – 19 Feb 2016) 2016) Umberto Eco once wrote: “We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death.” This limit has now sadly caught up with the author of these words himself. Philosopher, semiotician, linguist and novelist Eco has died at the age of 84 of pancreatic cancer from which he had been suffering for two years. Eco first came to wide public attention for his 1980 novel The Name of the Rose, Rose , a medieval whodunnit whose plot centred on a lost work by Aristotle, and whose title connected it with Eco’s interests in philosophy of language. “What’s in a name? A rose by any other name does smell as sweet.” He followed this with the complex thriller Fouca thriller Foucault’s ult’s Pendulum Pendulum,, packed full of hidden philosophical and literary allusions, not to mention a pacy plot whose moral concerns humanity’s insatiable hunger for meaning in a changing world. Yet Eco claimed to be a novelist only at weekends: during the week he taught at the University of Bologna and wrote numerous academic texts particularly on semiotics (the study of signs, communications and meaning-making). Bubble Universes Stanford University’s prestigious Bunyan Lectures, proposed by philosopher James T. Bunyan in in 1970, are are intended intended to “give a reasonable explanation of the origin and structure of the Universe, the beginnings of life and the ascent and destiny of man.” This year’s chosen speaker was Alexander Alexander Vilenkin, Vilenkin, Professor Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Cosmology at Tufts University. He is a proponent of the eternal inflation model, and used his lecture on March 9 to bring to public attention the idea of ‘bubble universes’ created during the Big Bang. They are distinct regions of the inflationary multi verse, which can decay to to a vacuum. vacuum. The The decaying regions constitute sub-universes which are are causally causally independen independentt of each each other, though Vilenkin is investigating the
News
possibility of interactions between them. Each bubble universe is characterised by its own distinctive physical laws, which apply consistently across its own region of spacetime. Concerning the significance of this theory, Vilenkin remarked: “It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape: they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.”
we don’t don’t yet know the the moral effects effects and long-term psychological effects of continual immersion in a virtual world. He frets that repeated immersive experience of violent violent acts, for instance, instance, may traumatise traumatise individuals or make them more likely to commit similar acts in real life. Therefore in an article in the journal Front journal Frontiers iers in , he and Michael Madary Robotics Robotics and and AI have for the first time outlined a code of ethics for VR users, which they believe should include principles such as not doing anything as an avatar that you wouldn’t do in the real world.
Culture, Lies and Individuals Immanuel Kant famously teaches us that it is completely up to each individual to decide not to tell lies. However, new research suggests that social context strongly shapes our behaviour with respect to honesty or dishonesty. Findings of a detailed study reported in Natur in Naturee in March reveal that individuals are more likely to lie if they live in a country with high levels of corruption and fraud at the level of government institutions. Simon Gächter and Jonathan Schulz used used data data on government government corruption, tax evasion, and election fraud from the World Bank and Freedom House, to create an index of institutionalised rulebreaking. Over a five year period they travelled to 23 countries, conducting tests with individuals measuring their propensity to cheat and deceive in dice-based betting games. The results showed a clear correlation between dishonesty on institutional and personal levels. Schulz, an experimental economist at Yale University, comments: “It seems that people benchmark their dishonesty with what they’re surrounded by in their daily life.”
Philosopher Honoured by Medical Establishment Philosopher and essayist Konrad Paul Liessmann, 62, has been awarded the Watzlawick Watzlawick Prize, Prize, given by the Vienna medical association to individuals who have furthered the discourse between the sciences and practical efforts to create a more humane world. Liessmann, one of Austria’s Austria’s best known intellec intellectuals, tuals, is is a founding member and academic head of the eminent interdisciplinary forum Philosophicum Lech.
What’s Virtue in Virtual Reality? Prof. Thomas Metzinger, a philosopher at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, Germany, is looking looking forward forward to the impending launch of virtual reality (VR) gaming equipment such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. However, he warns that
Konstantinos Despotopoulos (8 Feb 1913 1913 – 7 Feb 2016) 2016) Greece has lost a prominent philosopher-politician. Konstantinos Despotopoulos passed away the day before his 103rd birthday. A philosophy lecturer at the University of Athens, he was jailed during the civil war of the late 1940s, and later during the Rule of the Colonels in the late 1960s he was exiled to France, where he worked at CNRS and the University of Nancy. After the fall of the dictatorship he was professor professor and rector rector of Panteion University in Athens, before becoming Minister Minister of National Education Education and ReliReligious Affairs from 1989 to 1990. He fought for the abolition of the death penalty and to promote gender equality. He wrote thirty two books on ethics, the nature of freedom, and the philosophy of action as well as history and politics. April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 5
New Realism I’m talking with with Markus Gabriel, Gabriel, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bonn, in particular about his new book Why book Why The World World Does Not Exist . But first tell us a little about your background. How did you get interested interested in philosophy philosophy in the the first place? place? At some point point in school school I felt frustrated frustrated because the questions that were raised there and the ways they were answered didn’t seem satisfying to me. The answers were somewhat unjustified and ungrounded, in pretty much all disciplines. Then I happened to break my ankle skateboarding and I had to stay at home over the summer, so I started reading some philosophy because a friend of mine who was much older gave me Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Reason. So this is how it all started.
Markus Gabriel one of the founders of New Realism, talks to Anja Steinbauer about why the world does not exist, and other curious metaphysical topics.
Wow, and you read through the entire book? Oh yes, I read the entire book. I’m not sure what exactly I understood, but after wards wards I read Schopenhau Schopenhauer er,, and and then then I thought for a while that I had finally understood what I had read before. So then you decided to study philosophy? Yes. Yes. When I was was about fifteen or sixteen sixteen I decided to become a philosophy professor! I said to myself that’s the only viable career if if I want to do that. You became a philosophy professor younger than anyone else in Germany, so that’s kind of cool. Are you very ambitious? I’m certainly very ambitious, but I think I just really absolutely love philosophy. It’s a form of obsession. Philosophy is the one activity I love most. So the sort of questions Kant asks in the Critique of Pure Reason [1781] are the kind of questions that have stuck with you as well? Yes, Yes, the topics topics Kant raised raised seem to me me still central. I disagree with most of the things that Kant has to say about them, but I think he raised the right questions and defined the right framework. So in that sense I’m still working from within that tradition. Talking about traditions, would you align yourself with with a particular tradition, tradition, in terms of the analytic/continental analytic/continental split, or perhaps even something more specific? I think I just think of myself as doing
6 Philosophy Now Now ● April/May April/May 2016
what philosophe philosophers rs have have done done under under the the name of philosophy. The only tradition I like to adhere to is the one which happily embraces the label ‘philosophy’. I hate the idea of analytic and continental philosophy as distinct, I think this distinction is utterly misguided. Analytic philosophy usually just means ‘philosophy’, and continental philosophy usually also just means ‘philosophy’, but it is used as a pejorative term by another group. On the [European] Continent, where I am from, you cannot find ‘Continental philosophy’ just as you can’t get a ‘Continental breakfast’ in Bonn – or maybe only in some tourist hotel. But then also, ‘analytic philosophy’; what exactly does it mean? So I just happily embrace the label ‘philosophy’, I don’t don’t want to go g o beyond philosophy like Nietzsche or Heidegger wanted to, so in in that that sense sense too too I just adhere to the tradition of philosophy. philosophy. I think you’re you’re right, that sort of labelling is misguided. It is wrong to think that ‘continental philosophers’ don’t analyse, because clearly they do, or that they’re only to be found on the Continent. Continent. So philosophy philosophy in your sense is not one thing, but could be be lots of different things ? Oh yes, that’s true. In a certain sense I’m just a very traditional modern philosopher, in that what I am trying to do is to give an account of what reason is in its most general shape. This commits me to radical cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitanism, and all sorts of things follow from it, but I think that I’m just digging into the structure of reason itself. That’s interesting. Where has it led you? Well, Well, currently it has led me into being part of a group of people who are declaring a new form of realism. New Realism here is just the idea that with the help of good old armchair philosophy we can actually describe how reality is in itself. I don’t think there’s anything standing between us and how things are, and I think that reason, if it does a good job, has an an immediate grasp grasp of how things really are. Your new book is called Why Why The World World Does Not Exist – great title, and people would want to know that. But who is the book for? Is it for other philosophers, or for Interview Interview
Interview everybody? Why Why should philosophers read it? Why should everybody else too? What is it meant to do? Well Well it’s it’s really a book for the the general educated audience, but it contains new thoughts, so on the one hand it’s pretty much a book for everybody, but many of the ideas I present I think are new and radical. It is a presentation of my approach to philosophy, but it’s designed to be accessible to anyone who is willing to read a philosophy book, so I try not to make any assumptions, assumptions, neither historical, nor technical. It should just be the clearest expression possible of my thoughts on the topics I deal with in it. ‘New Realism’ was used as a label before, a hundred years ago, but this is not the same thing, right? This is a new movement, which you have have co-defined co-defined with Maurizio Maurizio Ferr Ferraris, aris, is that right? So what’s what’s that all about? What’s new is is that I define define New Realism as a combination of two tenets. Tenet one: we can grasp things in themselves. That’s the sense that that philosoph philosophers ers have have attached to the word ‘realism’ – as a theory of our access to how things really are, so I hold on to that. My more radical approach is shown in tenet two:, things in themselves do not belong to a single domain, ‘the world’. So what I mean by New Realism is realism without the world. Many philosophers would say that realism means we have immediate access to the world [as it really is]; but I deny the existence of ‘the world’ in this particular sense. So it’s it’s realism without a single reality. That’s what I think think is new new about this particular approach. In a certain sense I’ve learnt a lot from the anti-realist philosophers who popped up all over the place after the earlier New Realism movement, in which people like Roy Wood Sellars, the father of Wilfrid Sellars, were involved. involved. I think think the earlier movement was not yet able to fully formulate the theories needed because antirealism had not yet been developed in the relevant ways by Michael Michael Dummett Dummett and Hilary Putnam. Interview
But now the time is right? Now the time is right because now we know why anti-realism doesn’t work. Before we hadn’t even really tried it. Of course there were all these anti-realist ideas out there in the history of philosophy, but no one had really penetrated to the logical core of anti-realism in the way that Dummett Dummett did. So philosophy is also kind of a historical process. process. Why is it so importa important nt to you to to claim claim that the world doesn’t exist? You seem to be saying that at no time can we we actuall actuallyy grasp grasp the world, but we can grasp smaller entities of meaning. But why deny the existence of the world? Why can’t we accommodate all those entities of meaning within one world, which after all is something we can conceptualise? Well Well I doubt doubt that we can can actua actually lly concepconceptualise it. I think what we can achieve are local unifications. Of course I can depart from an investigation into where I am right now: we are sitting in a hotel… somewhere in London; London is part of the UK, which in some sense is part of Europe, et cetera. cetera. You widen your horizon and try to encompass everything from a given starting position. But when you’re almost done with it – when you’ve zoomed out, as it were, into the universe and you are moving farther and farther away, you can never get to a final point. You’ You’re re almos almostt done, done, and then someone someone says, “You forgot the numbers!” – “Oh damn, I have to go back, I forgot that the numbers 1,2,3 and all the other finite
numbers also exist!” So you have to add them to the mix. Then someone else might say: “What about the past?” – “Oh yeah, I forgot the past…” Very Very soon soon you you will will realize realize that you have always been reducing entities whilst you were trying trying to to constr construct uct a coheren coherentt single single world world pictu picture. re. There’ There’s alway alwayss a different different category that you’ve missed. I think that this difficulty cannot be overcome even in principle. Why? Not because we are feeble and finite and stupid and human, but because there is no unified picture available. That which the picture aims to describe can’t exist in principle. But even if we can’t give a full account of the world, does that mean it doesn’t exist? exist – which is Well Well it does does precisel preciselyy not not exist – why I start start the book book with with a certain certain analysi analysiss of the concept of existence: So what do we mean when we say ‘existence’? There is some linguistic evidence that when we attribute existence to something, it means that certain restrictions are in place: we where re.. In the series think things exist some exist somewhe of natural integers, the number 3 will be a number between 2 and 4, say. Many statements of existence work in such a way that they define a location. If you look at the history, the very word ‘existence’ – which comes by the way from Plato, and then was picked picked up up by the Romans Romans – means means ‘to stand out’. ‘ Exister Existeree’ just means that. And in many languages you have the idea that existence has something to do with a location, as in Italian and French, and, in a certain sense, even in Chinese we can talk about that. So the idea of existence comes with the idea of a location location.. But But now now you you think ‘Wow, so there must be a location for everything.’ But what is the location? Some people would say the universe. But what’ what’s the the univers universe? e? By By ‘univ ‘universe’ erse’ I refer refer to the object domain under investigation by our best natural scientific practices. But science doesn’t investigate why Van Gogh was a better better painter painter than me, or why why Goethe is a better writer than Heidegger. Those Those are are just just not not objec objects ts of of scienc science. e. Let’ Let’s talk talk more about about metaph metaphysics ysics.. You addre address ss both monism and dualism, and you align yourself yourself with pluralism, pluralism, which is a position position that’s not really taken by many, and hasn’t been since its great champion Leibniz [1646 April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now
7
New Realism 1716]. So tell us more about how that works. First, First, could you you just say what what pluralism pluralism is? is? Okay, Okay, here is how I think about this. By ‘metaphysics’, I tend to refer to the theory of absolutely everything that exists. I deny that this works. So metaphysics strictly speaking is impossible – it has no object. By ‘ontology’, I mean the systematic investigation into existence: What are we saying when we claim something exists? What is existence? Those are the questions of ontology for me, and if you are a ‘monist’, what you are saying is that everything which exists shares a feature – existence! Maybe you have a subst a substantial antial account of what existence is: to be spatial-temporal, to be thought of by someone, whatever. So that would be a form of monism: to exist is to be a substance. That of course course is Spinoza Spinoza’’s idea, idea, and and Descartes’ idea of substance too, maybe. A dualist dualist such as Descart Descartes es would would further further say, “Well, yes, what exists is substance, but there are two kinds of substances.” That’s usually usually what is meant meant by by ‘dualis ‘dualism’ m’ in this context. I’m a pluralist. That means that you cannot unify everything that exists by giving a substantial account of existence. So existence itself is not a unifying feature of things. Things exist in indefinitely many domains. What it is for the number 2 to exist, is for it to be part of the series of natural numbers. What it is for Angela Merkel to exist as the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, many, is for her to be subject to the German constitution, et cetera. cetera. And you cannot unify these entities under one domain. So the pluralist has a radical commitment to the existence of indefinitely many domains of existence. And a ‘domain’ ‘domain’ would be defined as...? as...? Well Well that can be trick trickyy. But But certa certainly inly I don’t think that all domains are sets. That’ That’s a technica technicall issue, issue, but roughly roughly,, eleelements of sets in the mathematically precise sense are not artworks or chancellors. They turn into elements elements for sets only if we abst abstract ract away from from their their specific specific features. That’s why sets have no ontological importance. If we say ‘domain’, that’s pretty vague; we just mean whatever domain. So this term, although often used by philosophers and logicians, is usually not well defined. So I replace it with a more clearly defined notion, which I call a 8
Now ● April/May Philosophy Now April/May 2016
‘field of sense’. By a field of sense I mean objects appearing under conditions that we can can make make exclusiv exclusivee throu through gh rules rules.. For For instance, physical objects are subject to those rules uncovered by [physical] science. The sense under which these things appear is the sense of the laws of physics. The sense sense under under which which an object object appears appears in the series of natural numbers is defined by, for example, the Peano axioms. So that’s my idea. What distinguishes a domain from other domains are the rules that make the object available in domains to a true thought. So coming back to your example of Angela Merkel, Merkel, what what are the implications for for per sonal identity? That’s That’s a wonderful wonderful question! question! I think one one of the implications is that the question of personal identity is not the question of the identity of a certain body over time. It’s also not the question of the identity of a narrative over time. I think that the traditional spectrum under investigation here is too limited, because, for example, Angela Merkel’s role as a chancellor is constitutive of who she is. So the question question is, “How “How can Angela Merkel continue continue to be what she is?” Part of the answer is that she falls under the relevant concepts that turn someone into the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. If she plays that role, she’s going to be Angela Merkel. But then then there are other other roles that she plays under other concepts. So to me the question of personal identity is ultimately the question of which concepts something falls under, and not so much the question of under which concept is the same body the same person. So there isn’t really a unified self? Oh no, there is definitely not a not a unified self, if by that we mean something like an essence of Markus Gabriel somehow floating around and contingently instantiated right now by me raising my left hand. This is what is usually meant by ‘self’. In that sense there really is no self. Does that put you closer to a kind of postmodernism, perhaps? You know, the idea of fragmentation, fragmentation, and the leaving behind of absolutes and commitments to unified ideas? There are very many many similarities similarities
between what some thinkers who are called ‘postmodern’ worked out in the 1960s, 70s and 80s in Paris and what I am saying. But you know, when it comes to the details, there are very many differences too. In particular their take on fragmentation tends to come with a rejection of the method that I employ in philosophy, rational argumentation. I don’t think that reason is fragmented in the way that they suspect it to be. I think reason is exactly homogeneous. That’s That’s a huge, major major difference. difference. That’s That’s kind of the red thread that runs through everything? Absolutely. Absolutely. That runs through everything philosophy says. So there is a red thread – but you know, that red thread doesn’t cover everything there is. I’m not saying something Hegelian Hegelian – that reason is spread out over things, and things are mysteriously dreamt up in such a way that reason can grasp them, and so reason and things cooperate. I reject that picture; it seems to me overgeneralized. Reason is not that central to what there is. But there is only one form of reason. That doesn’t make reason less central or more central. In your book you you argue that sense sense experience experience is not subjective. subjective. This This is kind of surprising because it always seems that my senses are senses. You also state that our idea of my senses. sense experience experience is restricted, restricted, is that right? One way of looking at sense experience is of course as something that pushes experience into your head in a number of steps. So it may be that in the end you even believe that there is a veil of perception [that obscures reality]. But how does sense experience enter our heads? Let me redescribe the situation. If you were to be sitting sitting where where I am, am, things would roughly look to to you the way they look to me. Many things would be different because we are different – Well, we don’t don ’t know. Well, Well, I think think we do know. I think there are objective optical facts about how se for things look. Perspectives per Perspectives per se instance, are objective – we can describe the laws. That’s That’s why we have glasses! So the very fact that we have glasses and 3D movie theatres tells us that there are Interview Interview
Interview objective facts about sense experience. Sense experience is not like a fleeting thing nowhere to be found, like an afterimage. Many philosophers and neuroscientists construe sense experience as if we were constantly constantly looking looking through through afterafterimages onto a material world. But I think after-images are incredibly rare. Even though after-images do take place, most there, in exactly of what I see right now is there, the way it looks seen from here. I want to say that things seen, or heard, or smelled from a given perspective, are no less real than things unobserved. We tend to think that there’s a furniture to the world out there, literally like there is in this room, and that if no one is around then the furniture’s furniture’s arranged in non-perspecti val ways, ways, as if Euclidean Euclidean geometry geometry defined how things are really related in this room; but then your subjective experience enters the room and that distorts things. But in themselves things are Euclidean. Well, Well, first, we know they are not exactly Euclidean; and second, I think that this is a completely weird metaphysical picture. Nevertheless, I have to pay a price for my theory of sense experience, and here’s here’s the price: I have to Is this the Moon?
Interview
say that perspectives onto things are features of the things themselves. It is a property of this [thing] to look that way from here, it is not a property of me. I don’t don’t bring perspectives into a world that doesn’t doesn’t have perspectives, I sample perspectives that are already there. As the philosopher Mark Johnston has put it, “We “We are not producers of presence but samplers of presence.” But we can see how sense experience can go wrong, and we try to correct it if we think it doesn’t work the way it ought – so hearing aids, glasses and so on. So in that sense clearly there is something about my subjective sense apparatus that contributes, right? I wouldn’t call this subjective. The contribution that I make to the way things look is a completely objective contribution. You can tell how it’s been done. It’s not ‘unsayable’, in that sense of subjective… It’s not like I see something that you don’ don’tt see, and I can’t can’t even describe describe to you what it is – the ‘inexpressible’ green. And so in that sense I also don’t believe that there are qualia [subjective qualities of sense experience]. Let me give another example that might be
helpful to understand how I want to look at sense perception. Think of the Moon. How close do you have to be to the Moon in order to be sure that you see the Moon itself? You might say, “Well, look, that’s that’s not the Moon, I can cover cover it up with with my hand. hand. It It can’t be the Moon because I cannot cover up the Moon with my hand.” So this is how people start thinking, “So it must be a sensation of the Moon! I’m not covering up the Moon, I’m covering up a sensation of it.” But how close do you have have to be be to the the Moon so that that it really is the Moon? So you can see that there is something confused about the idea. I think what we need to say is that, well, the the Moon seen from from here is such such that I can cover it up with my hand – and now you tell an objective story, also a physiological story, of how this works – because photons from it arrive here under certain conditions, my optical cetera. So it is instruments detect them, et cetera. the Moon that I can cover up, but it’s only part of the Moon that I can cover up – namely, the part of the Moon that arrives here in the form of photons. That’s an interesting twist you introduce here, although I’m not convinced it’s the only possible account, or if it’s specific enough. We could frame frame this another another way. way. I think think the problem problem with saying “I’m covering up the Moon” is that perhaps we’re not specific enough about what is exactly meant by ‘covering up’. Definitely. It’s just that people often think that you can get at the contribution that us in a certain way. we make make if we look look at us in Let me give g ive you an example. e xample. There’s There’s this wonderful wonderful discussion discussion between between Quassim Quassim Cassam and John Campbell in their book Berkeley’s Puzzle [2014] where many points that are relevant for my account pop up. In this book Campbell defends something very close to what I want to defend, namely, namely, what he calls a ‘relational view’ of experie experience. nce. Here a sense sense experiexperience, say of this table, is a relation between me, the table and the perspective. So there are three entities involved here – me, the table, and the perspective – and the way that we are related is the experience. Cassam objects: What about eye doctors? Some people can see the letter ‘A’ ‘A’ on an eye chart better than others, April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now
9
New Realism meaning the others have worse vision, so there must be some kind of subjective contribution. What I’m saying is that what is here here called called ‘subjectiv ‘subjective’ e’ is actually actually super-objective. super-objective. So I give up the idea that there is the real ‘A’ in the eye test case, because no one can tell you what it is: my ‘A’ ‘A’ might be less or more distorted than someone else’s ‘A’. If anything is subjective about my ‘A’, ‘A’, there will be something subjective about anybody’s ‘A’. Hence we lose the idea of an objective ‘A’ ‘A’ on that construal. This is why I think that my account is better, because the relational account can only give the idea that any ‘A’ in itself would be an ‘A’ that is absolutely clear, as it were.
M O C . . O D A V E R C . . M I D A V TI IS V E S A E L
P . 6 1 0 2
D MI D A
V © CI H P A R G N OI SI
V
W E
N
V O R O M Z O
That’s presumably got interesting consequences for various areas. An obvious one is art. Aesthetics, of course, literally has to do with the Greek aisthetikos, aisthetikos, meaning, ‘to be perceived by the senses’, senses’, and on the whole whole we think of that as meaning that aesthetics is very subjective. You have a whole chapter on art in your book. Would you like to tell us a little more about what you think? Definitely. I am one of those who say that Kant’s aesthetics is utterly confused to the degree to which he makes statements about the beautiful and the sublime. Those are his own examples, of course. He doesn’t really go into art works, and probably never went to a museum, so I don’t think he’s a great art expert. Kant walks through the woods, and oh, there’s a form! For him that’s as good as Picasso. That could tell us something about his philosophy of art. But of course he’s not interested in art, he’s interested in aesthetics. Exactly! He’s He’s interested in the beautiful and the sublime because he thinks that judgments judgments which contain contain ‘It’ ‘It’s beautif beautiful’ ul’ or ‘It’s ‘It’s sublime’ are somehow special: they tell us both something about ourselves and something about the objects; and then his analysis starts. But I think that this is not at all helpful. I think he’s he’s talking about tastes there. So this would be gastronomic philosophy rather than philosophy of art. I think that artworks show us that they are things in themselves. They display the fact that they’re constituted in such a way that perspectives on them are already integrated into 10
Now ● April/May Philosophy Now April/May 2016
the thing. Artworks are there to be seen, to be heard, to be eaten etc. e tc. I happen to think of good restaurants as museums. I think that artworks have exactly those features that I ascribe to objects in general. So in my view, artworks show us what objects objects are. are. But But they they always always go beyond themselves and tell us what objects essentially are. Artworks paradigmatically speak in favour of the kind of ontology I’m laying out. The very fact that artworks can then start talking amongst each other – “No, this is this is what objects are”; ‘No, that is that is what objects are” – that disagreement among artworks I think is pretty compatible with the philosophical picture I’m trying to defend. But of course, now you might argue, “Well, look, you’re just projecting this on to the artworks. The real action will take place in the the actual actual interp interpretati retation on of the object.” So come to a museum with me, and and then then the the question question will be who convinces convinces whom. Coming out of your philosophical position is a sense that all perspectives are in a way equally legitimate. Is that right? There’s a sort of relativism relativism there? there? I don’t think so at all. I think that all perspectives equally exist , if you like, but I’m not saying that they’re all equally legitimate. mate. Recognising that something exists is not tantamount to saying that it’s good. It’s very easy to refute the traditional philosophical premise that existence is itself good: a non-existing dictator is bet-
ter than an existing dictator. In general, existence is not better than non-existence. So I don’t see any tie between what exists and whether what exists is legitimate. On the contrary, lots of things exist that ought not to exist, such as dictators. Fair Fair enough. Where does this this leave truth? Truth Truth is is quite quite central central here, I think that I’m a minimalist about truth in various senses. I don’t think that truth is a feature of propositions or statements or assercetera. Truth tions et cetera. Truth is not primarily linguistic. I think that when we say something is true, what we are saying is that something holds good of something objectively. Or, if we say that something holds good of something, then we say that it is true – but what we say has already been true, we just hadn’t said it. It holds good of me that I have two hands, whether someone has ever said so so or not. So I think that truth means that something holds good of something and is an objective feature of how things really are. What do you mean ‘it holds good’? In what sense? Well, Well, at the very least, it means that something has a certain property. But I think that there are objective relations. So the many perspectival realities – fields of sense – have objective structures that are pretty much like those structures we uncover when we make true statements. So reality has various logical forms. There’s nothing nothing mysterious mysterious about this. Philosophers have thought for a long time that this is mysterious, but why? Because they were Kantians, in my view – they thought that behind the logical form of things, there might be something that does not have that form. I think a lot of philosophy has been under the grip of the idea that “But what if all our statements were false? false? Then Then reality reality would would not have the form at all that we ascribe to it!” But I think that the very idea of “But what if all statements were false” is so misguided. We We shouldn’ shouldn’tt model our philosop philosophy hy along the lines of how things would be if everything we believed was false, because we cannot cannot even make make sense sense of the idea that everything we believe is false. • Dr Anja Steinbauer teaches at the London
School of Philosophy and is an Editor of PN. PN. Interview Interview
New Realism Professor Ferrari Ferraris, s, are there any keywords you’d you’d like to give our readers to help them understand New Realism? I’ll give you seven, one for each day of the week: Individuals. Ontology (what there is) is only made up of individuals: this inter view; a summer summer storm; the the ant that runs runs across my table. Obviously, epistemology (what we know about what there is) speaks of speaks of ‘interviews’, ‘storms’, ‘ants’, using words and concepts that designate classes of things; but the classes to which these words words refer do do not exist except in thought. that individuUnamendability. The fact that als exist independently of thought is proven by the fact that they cannot be amended or corrected with the power of thought. This is in distinct contrast to notions and concepts, that is, to what we know, which obviously can be corrected through thought. Individuals do not change through our thinking about them; but the knowledge that we have of them has changed many times, and it is far from certain that the knowledge we have today is definitive – although it is probably closer to the inner nature of individuals than it was in the past. Unamendability describes Invitation. Unamendability the negative side of realism, but what’s more interesting is the positive side. Precisely because they have unamendable internal properties, individuals offer invitations or directions for use, or, to use a philosophical philosophical term, affordances . I cannot use a screwdriver to clean my ears (except at great risk); but as well as screwing screws in or out, I can usefully use it to open a package, or to kill a family member. Each of these actions which are, so so to speak, embedded in the the individual screwdriver, opens up a possible world, and, in the last case, even serious moral and legal consequences. consequences. Interaction. Individuals interact in an environment, and this interaction, made possible by the properties of the individuals, their unamendability and their invitations, began long before the emergence of human consciousness. Objects were there before before people, and and interacting too. This is proven by the fact that we can interact interact with individuals individuals endowed with conceptual schemes Interview
different from our own – for example, I can play with my cat Cleo – and that these individuals, in turn, interact with individuals with conceptual schemes different from theirs, or completely devoid of conceptual schemes altogether. Cleo tries to catch a wasp and the wasp tries to escape, or Cleo plays alone with a ball of string... these are interactions between different beings that do not depend on human consciousness. consciousness. Recording. Interactions leave traces: on matter – the glass of my watch was slightly scratched against the wall – and in the specialized form of matter that we call memory. memory. Usually nothing happens as a result. Sometimes something unpleasant happens – the glass of my watch is broken. Sometimes a good thing occurs – an alteration of the DNA results in the evolution of the species, or two memories meet accidentally and create a passion or an idea. In any case, these things are recorded, and the importance of recorded traces is possibly more manifest today than ever before. Think of the amount of permanently-recorded data online. Emergence. Recording, or the trace of an event, determines the birth of something new; if the Big Bang itself had left no trace, the universe would have returned to nothingness. Then there’s the birth of life and the evolution of species, of meaning, of society – in short, all the objects that decorate our world – our ontology. From ontology, or the existence of individual things, emerged epistemology, or our knowledge of the world. The process is exactly the oppoopposite of that proposed by constructivists, which is that that a consciousness consciousness somehow somehow fallen as if from heaven determines the genesis of individuals, that is, that epistemology constructs ontology. Revolution. Realism is not the thesis – as claimed by fools, those essential products of evolution – that there are tables and chairs. Anti-realists know this too, even though they insist that they are not tables and chairs in themselves , but tables and chairs for chairs for us . But least of all does verifying reality mean accepting it it as it is, giving up the transformation wished for by Marx. Realism is exactly the opposite of this. The transformation of reality, or more precisely, revolution, is possible and necessary; but it requires
Maurizio Ferraris Manuel Carta talks with Prof. Maurizio Ferraris of the University of Turin, another leading exponent of New Realism.
April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 11
Maurizio Ferraris by Gail Campbell (2016)
12 Philosophy No Now w ● Apri April/May l/May 2016
Interview Inte rview
Interview real action and not mere thoughts . Realism is the rejection of revolutions made only in thought – the Armchair Revolutions, revolutions made in speculation, in the comfort of one’s own head.
once again it is not clear to me what I’m being accused of.
In the section section on ‘Negativity’ ‘Negativity’ in your book Introduction Introduction to New Realism , you sum up the problem of power in relation to knowledge in the imaginary figure of Foukant, Foukant, who is Foucault+Kant oucault+Kant [see [see the next next article for a further elucidation of this. Ed.]. What do you think was Foucault’s mistake? Foucault insisted on a true fact: that knowledge is a tool of domination, and so can be a form of power. Unfortunately, in doing so he overshadowed another true fact, which was actually the presupposition of his own work as a politically-engaged politically-engaged philosopher: that knowledge can also be a form of liberation – the greatest one there is – as well as being the anti-authoritarian principle par excellence excellence.
Despite your wish to overcome deconstruction, Jacques Derrida is one of the thinkers who have influenced you the most. Can you tell us more about your relationship to that French French philosopher? philosopher? Certainly. Certainly. If I had to summarize my own philosophy, philosophy, I’d say it is an attempt to reconstruct deconstruction. Let me give a few examples. Derrida, especially at the beginning of his work, used to resort to obscure expressions – partly for political reasons, or as he wrote in an interview, interview, to escape the Stalinist censure dominant in the Ecole Ecole Norma Normale le Supér Supérieur ieuree. By contrast, I have tried to write as clearly as possible. Derrida had dazzling insights, for example that writing has a transcendental role, knowledge can also but then he compromised the originality be a form of liberation of this discovery by saying that “there is “ nothing outside the text”, which went – the greatest one along with the mainstream of the time there is – as well as (“Language is the house of being” being the anti[Heidegger] and so forth). I have narrowed the scope of his claim about authoritarian principle writing writing to its own own space, space, arguing arguing instead instead par excellence. that there is nothing social social outside the text. I’ve developed a social ontology New Realism Realism isis a global global philosophy, philosophy, in that based on documents – written and other wise recorded, recorded, as Derrida Derrida had antici antici-it involves the cooperation of thinkers from pated. Derrida based all his later philosodifferent countries. Is this a new phenomephy on the role of otherness – of what non in the cultural landscape, or can you resists the subject and his thought, and identify similar cases in the history of surprises the subject. I have formulated thought? Plotinus was born in Egypt, wrote in realism as the doctrine that ‘to exist is to Greek and lived in Italy; Thomas resist’, with an appeal to individuality that Aquinas was was born in Italy Italy and studied studied is very Derridean. It is also linked to the and taught in France and Germany; thinking of an author by whom Derrida Leibniz was born in Germany and was secretly secretly much much affect affected: ed: the Danish Danish existentialist Søren Kierkegaard. wrote in French. French. It is only only from the the nineteenth century that philosophers philosophers thought of themselves as national How do you reply reply to those those who argue argue New thinkers who wrote in a national Realis Realism m has has misint misinterpr erprete etedd Niet Nietzsc zsche’ he’ss sayi saying ng language, speaking to their countrymen. that “there are no facts, only interpretations”? The accusation accusation is a worrying worrying sign of That was, I believe, a phenomenon phenomenon of involution, which also took place confusion. If there are no facts, only precisely at the time when science was interpretations, I don’t see how I can be going more global. On the other hand, accused of having misunderstood it was a transitory phenomenon, phenomenon, which anything! Conversely, if one believes fortunately is coming to an end. that I really have mis interpreted interpreted this assumption, then it is not true that there are no facts, only interpretations, and Is New Reali Realism sm an exclu exclusiv sivel elyy acad academ emic ic trend trend,,
”
Interview
or is it relevant outside of university? I hope it is also relevant outside of academia, as was the case with postmodernism, postmodernism, hermeneutics and deconstruction. I’d be very happy if this trend got got even wider than it already is – not because of any megalomaniac drives I have, but simply because I agree with Kant that in the end the practical side is what matters. If philosophy is useless outside of school, then what’s the point of it? This might seem obvious, but it isn’t. There are philosophers – quite a few, to be honest – who are proud of the fact that their views are only spread among specialists and academics. I don’t understand why. Philosophy has a public dimension to it: it’s part of its essence. If you want to do specialized research in a truly useful way, way, choose oncology oncology over ontology. ontology. On the other hand, if you want to do specialized research that is not useful, that to me is rather a perversion. Does today’s philosophy need a specific language as a lingua franca? The fact that Conrad, Kafka Kafka or Nabokov originally spoke languages other than those in which they wrote hasn’t hasn’t lessened the effectiveness of their work... Conversely Conversely,, imagine what what would happen to medicine if the research got fragmented into languages and dialects. It is not clear why philosophy should be an exception. But there is no one language for philosophy – this idea was claimed by the Nazi Heidegger, who argued that philosophy only speaks German. The philosophical language is not English either; of course I use it, badly, expressing myself in stammering pidgin, because it is the most widely spoken; but on occasion I use Italian and French, and also – as I have no shame – Spanish and German. I need to make myself understood, not to show that I speak a language well. This multiplicity of languages is a variety of resources – quite the opposite of the ‘single thought’ that fools wrongly attribute to globalization. globalization.
• Manuel Manuel Carta has an MA in Philosophy Philosophy from the University University of Pisa, and is a freefreelance editor/writer e ditor/writer.. April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 13
New Realism
An Introduction to Introduction to New Realism Fintan Neylan explains the realism Maurizio Ferraris introduces in his Introduction.
A
t the opening of his 1907 lecture series ‘Pragmatism’, William William James commented commented on the the growing growing disparity disparity between academic philosophy and a philosophy whose relevance ordinary people would feel in their lives. This latter philosophy would be one which truly mattered to us, James claimed, because it would deal with “our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos” ( Pragmat Pragmatism ism,, 1907). Yet while technical philosophy is found to be wanting in this regard, James had no intention of presenting Pragmatism as sundered from it. Instead he proposes it as a middle road between the two demands, as the subtitle to the Some Old Old published lecture series indicates: A indicates: A New Name for Some Ways of Thinking . What James determined was new about Pragse, but that it presented an alternate matism was not the ideas per ideas per se way to discuss discuss quite quite ancient ancient ideas ideas,, or, or, rather rather,, a return return to them. It is in this spirit of the ‘new’ that we may assess Maurizio New Realism. Realism. Here Ferraris’s recently published Introduction published Introduction to New I will focus precisely on that to which New Realism allows us to return – namely, a way to deal with perception in ontologi-
“parts are inherently structured, and thus orientate the behaviour and thought of humans as well as animals” Maurizio Ferraris, Introduction to New Realism,, p.37 Realism
Rudolph II of Hapsburg as Vertumnus by Guiseppe Arcimboldo 1591
14 Philosophy Now Now ● April/May April/May 2016
cal terms (all will become clear). As the book’ book’ss title suggests, suggests, it aims to initiate readers readers into Ferraris’s position, which he tells us has been developing for well over twenty twenty years. He He clearly wants wants to introduce introduce more people – especially those with a stake in aesthetics – to the realist movements that are taking root in the Twenty-First Century. Sarah De Sanctis’s translation of the text from Italian renders Ferraris’s prose in a way which preserves the brisk pace of the book. Initiates are greatly helped by two extra elements too. First is the foreword by Iain Hamilton Grant, which charts the rise of ‘transcendentalism’ in philosophy, philosophy, the outcome of which “undercuts any claim to ‘being,’ ‘fact,’ or ‘really existing state of affairs’” (p.ix). This orients the reader to the challenges faced by any realism emerging today. Paired with the second element, the afterword that De Sanctis wrote with Vincenzo Santarcangelo, the reader is easily able to grasp Ferraris’s position. Negativity Ferraris first sets out a number of elements of New Realism, all of which are inspired by the fact that it is a “critique of constructivism” (p.10). Constructivism Constructivism denies the reality of anything independent of the human mind or culture, because it holds that all knowledge ultimately has a subjective or intersubjective origin. Ferraris sees constructivism as the result of the modern period’s uncertainty concerning the world perceived through the senses, so that it sees its task as being to “re-found, through construction, construction, a world that no longer has stability” (p.26). In contrast, New Realism aims to be a “return to perception” (p.8) and engages in a “relaunch of ontology as the science of being and of the multiplicity of objects” (pp.8-9). (Ontology is the study of the types of things that exist.) These elements are framed against what Ferraris sees as the prevailing tendencies in contemporary thought, which he explores in the first section of the book, ‘Negativity’. At the centre of ‘Negativity’ ‘Negativity’ are two philosophical philosophical figures, Foukant and Deskant. These are not historical philosophers, philosophers, but rather amalgamations of viewpoints which cluster around Descartes, Kant, and Foucault (or, more precisely, the reception of their ideas). In essence, both Foukant and Deskant serve as Ferraris’s intellectual foils. Foukant is a postmodernist, and is the outcome of fusing the subject, or the representing ‘I’ (via Kant), with an ontology based on power relations (via Foucault). Foukant’s position proceeds from this syllogism: “Reality is constructed by knowledge, knowledge is constructed by power, and ergo reality is constructed by power” (p.24). The problem with this is that Foukant thereby locks himself out of being able to discuss a mind-independent mind-independent reality, in part because he believes knowledge of reality is a social construction. In itself, this would be an unremarkable form of idealism, but it does not stop there.
New Realism Not only is all knowledge socially constructed, constructed, but, in this position, knowledge is always compromised politically, for “behind any form of knowledge there hides a power” (p.25). So on Foukant’s account, when we happen upon knowledge which claims to refer to a mind-independent mind-independent reality, reality, what is really going on is only an exertion of power by reigning forces. This suspici suspicion on of knowledge knowledge is not limited limited to postmoderpostmodernity; indeed, it goes back centuries. Ferraris claims it has its origins in a much older set of philosophical tendencies, which he collects under the figure of Deskant (ie Descartes + Kant). Deskant’s thinking combines the Cartesian subject, who is isolated from the physical world, with the Kantian subject, who frames the world but is not a part of it. Deskant’s belief is that “our conceptual schemes and perceptual apparatuses play a role in the constitution of reality” (p.26). This is in response to the uncertainty of the world opened up by early modern scepticism, which generated the idea that the the structure structure of of the world people see only comes through the subject: that it is what we ourselves have put into the world via our conceptual apparati, and so not present in reality itself. For this reason, the emergence of Deskant marks the point where conceptual knowledge trumps knowledge through the senses. There is a trade-off here: to ele vate conceptua conceptuality lity,, as Kant does does with with his ‘pure concepts of the understanding’, shields one against uncertainty, but at the price of there being “no longer any difference between the fact that there is an object X and the fact that we know the object X” (p.27). The trouble with Deskant and Foukant is that, in this absconding from dealing with reality in itself, they cannot but conflate of the knowledge of an entity with the entity itself. Thus we we enter an age where it is asked asked “not how things things are are in themselves, but how they should be made in order to be known by us” (p.26). Ferraris calls this collapse of ontology into epistemology the “fallacy of being-knowledge” (p.24). Positivity Having charted the various vestiges of ‘Negativity’, in the next section, ‘Positivity’, Ferraris turns to his own position: “if the realist is the one who claims that there are parts of the world that are not dependent on the subjects, the new realist asserts something more challenging. Not only are there large parts of the world independent of the cogito [the thinking subject], but those parts are inherently structured, and thus orientate the behaviour and thought of humans as well as animals” (p.37).
Ferraris’s Ferraris’s move here is twofold. He first agrees with Foukant and Deskant that knowledge is a human construction, but rejects their identification of knowledge of the world with the world world itself. itself. He claims claims knowledge knowledge may still still point to an indepenindependent reality which is inherently structured. There is not only the structure of the knowledge we have of the world (i.e. the conceptual schemes we have developed, which he calls “epistemological reality”) but also the actual structures of the world, whether whether perceived perceived or not not (“ontolo (“ontological gical reality”) reality”) (p.41). (p.41). Thus Thus his his account presents the reader with two strands of reality, or, as he puts it “two layers of reality that fade into each other” (p.41). With these these two layers, layers, it becomes clear that any attempt to portray Ferraris as occupying a more traditional realist position falters. This becomes even more apparent when he calls
his position a “naïve physics” (p.40). Guided by the principle that “the world presents itself to us as real without necessarily claiming on that account to be scientifically true” (p.40), naïve physics identifies a niche area in which philosophy can work, giving full justice to the world as it appears while making no claim to be doing science. As naïve physics, New Realism takes seriously “the philosophical importance of sensibility” (p.39), by not treating perception as something to be explained by the unknown principles of an unknown world of non-sensibility, or as something to be reduced to the mechanics of neurophysiolneurophysiology. Rather, perception delves into the world to express the reality of it as manifest to consciousness. Thus in Ferraris’s New Realism the world as we see and feel it is philosophically central to his enterprise. Unlike philosophies which hold that one may only seek out what exists by cutting beneath or beyond perception, in the guise of his naïve physics we may consider the ontological aspects of perception itself. In the rest of ‘Positivity’ we get Ferraris’s picture of the world; and in the section section called ‘Normativity’ ‘Normativity’ he explains the essential elements of this ontology of perception. At its core is a feature called ‘unamendability’, which Ferraris describes as that aspect of reality which serves as “a stumbling block to set against our constructivist constructivist expectations” (p.39). Unamendability is an aspect of reality that manifests itself in terms of nature’s resistance to the theories theories we concoct about about it – as what Ferraris refers to as “refusals” to the scaffolding of beliefs we have constructed. The function of refusals is that they always make it clear that reality is not quite what we think it is. That is, reality is self-constructive because howsoever we attempt to pin it down in formulated phrases, unamendability means that reality always possesses the capacity to eventually shatter the theoretical cast we have crafted for it. New Realities The unamendable aspect of reality does not just have have the negative role of providing refusals. It also pairs with what Ferraris calls the positive ‘affordance’ of objects and the world itself. By this he means that the very aspect of reality which can break down our conceptual schemes is also that which affords us new possibilities. possibilities. These possibilities cannot be intellectually deduced, but can only be discovered through interaction with the world. For example, a lemon can be food, but with the rise of electrical technology, through certain metal electrodes (zinc and copper), it may also be used as a battery. At the same time resists being a battery with other metals. These facts are only it resists being discoverable by doing science. The worldview offered to us us by Ferraris Ferraris is thus one of objects and their environments resisting and affording each other in different ways. While it seems intuitive to think of the natural world in these terms, Ferraris holds that this applies to the social world, too. Yet here Ferraris encounters a problem: given that he wishes to advance a realist position, he runs into the issue of how to grant the same ontological status to both the social and the natural worlds. Generally, one side is granted reality at the expense of the other. As we saw, by privileging the social world as real, social constructivists (as represented by Foukant) came to see the natural world as being little more than an exercise in power. Equally, scientific reduc April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 15
New Realism tionists hold that if the natural world is real, then the social world must be an illusion. illusion. For Ferraris, Ferraris, what is required is a way to hold hold onto the social social world as constructed constructed while still still maintaining it as a real, causally effective domain. Through what he calls ‘documentality’ ‘documentality’,, Ferraris proposes proposes a theory of the social world which he claims can conceive of it as fully real whilst still remaining mind-dependent. Documentality arises out of Ferraris’s analysis of objects, which he breaks down into four distinct classes: natural objects, ideal objects, artefacts, and social objects. The first two types are mind-independent. If one considers a rock and the number one as a respective instance of each class, for example, it is clear how both objects might continue to persist without any mind contemplating them. It is with the latter two objects that matters become interesting. What Ferraris has in mind when he discusses social objects is events such as commemorations, commemorations, holidays, corporations, corporations, TV shows, etc. Such objects are fully mind-dependent and cannot exist without people. While at first blush it may seem counter-intuitive counter-intuitive to think of social events as objects, Ferraris rightly points out that they causal effect natural objects: a corporation, for example, can determine the flow of raw materials and labour across the globe in a way hitherto unimaginable three three hundred years years ago. Most Most intriguing is Ferraris’s account of what he names ‘artefacts’: they are composed of natural objects, but one can only understand them with reference to social reality. Thus, although it is made up of physical materials, an artefact such as a computer had its genesis as a computer in computer in a specific social context. This dynamic dynamic of of artefac artefacts ts and and social social objects objects comes comes to force force in in the final section of the book, ‘Normativity’. Ferraris makes it clear that his aim is to show that meaning is located in the environment, and that people are mere receivers of meaning. In short, he proposes an alternative to the idea that meaning is ‘all in the mind’. Documentality offers an account of how meaning may emerge from merely natural objects. Ferraris says documentality is “the environment in which social objects are generated” (p.63), Ferraris in fact argues that all social all social objects may be considered documents. He makes a series of ambitious claims about the extent to which documentality conditions and constitutes the social world. Essentially, Ferraris sees the social world as emerging with the human capacity to record – record – that is, with the capacity to receive and store inscriptions. The development of civilization would thus be paralleled by a development in recording technology: although the social world must have first existed only in the minds of prehistoric people, with the advent of writing, the possibility for novel social objects came into being.
Ferraris calls his position a “weak textualism” or “weak constructivism” (p.65). This may seem odd, for New Realism was initially said to be a critique of constructivism. However, However, just as William William James James did not want want to disregard disregard the philosophies philosophies against which his pragmatism distinguished itself, neither does Ferraris wish to separate himself completely from late Twentieth Century thought. New Realism sets itself against the ‘strong textualism’ of postmodern philosophers, whose thesis was that that social social and linguistic linguistic acts acts – what what Ferraris Ferraris calls calls ‘inscrip‘inscriptions’ – constitute all of reality. Rather, the weak textualism of New Realism means that it limits its constructivism to the social world. As Ferraris claims, New Realism’s constructivism is “Weak because it assumes that inscriptions are decisive in the construction of social reality, but… it excludes that inscriptions may be constitutive of reality in general” (p.65). As we saw, saw, for Ferraris Ferraris it is only only with the emergence of recording that one finds anything like the social world. As if to emphasize this point, he writes, “it is through the sharing of documents and traditions that a ‘we’ is constituted” (p.82). This line of thinking culminates culminates in the idea idea that it is documentality that makes us responsible, responsible , for he sees our capacity to receive inscriptions as the basis of being able to make an obligation, which is the basis of any social relation. Perceiving Reality Anew So Ferraris’s claim that New Realism allows a return to perception and to ontology as the science of being holds up. The picture he offers us is of a “long chain of being that, through interaction, gradually leads to the emergence of everything” (p.80). This is ambitious stuff, and while the reader might at times want further detail or exploration, it must be borne in mind that the book is an introduction, and not a fully detailed explanation of his system. Keeping this in mind, the somewhat unorthodox move of using fictional philosophical figures becomes understandable. This decision recommends itself if only in that it gets around Ferraris having to labour the point between how a philosopher was received versus what they actually wrote. While no-one would deny that sometimes doing so is a scholarly necessity, it can be quite tiring on a reader who has not been schooled in the history of philosophy, or who is simply, and understandably, not interested in such minutiae. This book book as a whole whole aims to fully fully equip equip a reader reader unfamili unfamiliar ar with the the current current wave of speculative speculative and realist realist philoso philosophical phical positions. Given that such positions themselves are works in progress, it will be interesting to see how Ferraris’s thought influences further discussions over the next few years. For now though, we may explore with interest the realist philosophy of perception that Ferraris’s Ferraris’s work opens up. This is a philosophy which is adequate to dealing with the push and pressure of the cosmos. In returning to perception on its own ontological terms, it opens up a philosophy that can matter to us. © FINTAN NEYLAN 2016
Fintan Fintan Neylan Neylan is a PhD candidat candidatee in the Department Department of Philosophy Philosophy at the Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Spot the dog: Our knowledge of reality points to “an independent reality that is inherently structured”
16 Philosophy Now Now ● April/May April/May 2016
• Introduction to New Realism by Maurizio Ferraris, translated by Sarah De Sanctis, with a Foreward by Iain Hamilton Grant, Bloomsbury, 160pp, £14.99, ISBN: 978-1-47259 978-1-47259-594-2 -594-2
New Realism
SARAH DE SANCTIS Your education was mainly focused on literature. How did you discover philosophy? To To be honest, my training in philosophy philosophy dates back to high school. I also did a module in Aesthetics – Descartes, Kant and Husserl – during my BA, but that was it at university. university. I have been cultivating philosophy mainly because of my personal interest in the subject, but I have to say my high school teacher was absolutely exceptional – most people assume I have a degree in philosophy – they can’t tell! So thank you, Maria Teresa Teresa Cazzaniga. It’s It’s been incredibly incredibly hard and challenging, but worth it! Do you feel like an academic philosopher? If not, what do you think about academia? That’s That’s a tricky question. I do not conconsider myself an academic, even though I work in academia. academia. That’s because I find that academia has become increasingly sterile over the years: it seems to me that a select group of people speak to each other pretty much for the sake of it. I read somewhere that an academic essay is read by five people on average. What does that tell us? Personally, I believe that knowledge should be spread, and that part of the mission of academics should be to make people interested, to try and make people think about things in a different way. But this can’t be achieved as long as academic philosophy remains so unbearably technical, and, let’s face it, boring. I’m a big fan of vulgarisation: I’d rather simplify and perhaps bastardise a concept, but make it known and debated, than talk about it in a purist way to five other people on the entire planet! On this topic, there’s a website/study tool that I find absolutely brilliant. It’s called Shmoop, and it’s managed by PhD students from prestigious American uni versities – Harvard Harvard and the the like. Shmoop Shmoop addresses great works of literature in a witty and funny language, in a way that’ that’ss able to arouse interest even in the most
Manuel Carta
interviews Maurizio Ferraris’s translator into English.
bored and lazy students – it even worked with my brother! That, to me, is a real achievement! You are a professional translator. In what way has this given you extra skills to work on your philosophical research? In order to translate a text you have to read it extra-carefully, and think about it a lot. Any good translator is an excellent reader – the most demanding reader any text will ever get. You have to assess a text, and the ideas it expresses, almost word by word. So the the extra skill I developed is attention to detail. Also, I have found that writers whose language is Latin-based – so French, Spanish and, of course, Italian – tend to write in a rather complex, Proustian way – with very long and convoluted sentences. Translating Translating that into English implies a process of simplification and adjustment to a language that, by its nature, is very logical and ‘to the point’, if you know what I mean. This links back back to what I was just saying, namely namely my very perpersonal mission to make philosophy easier to understand, and, hopefully, less ‘scary’. Can you tell us about your interest in the novelist David Foster Wallace? What’s the link between his writing and New Realism? David Foster Wallace is surely one of my favourite writers. I was working on my PhD project proposal on his writing and philosophy when I attended the famous ‘Prospects for New Realism’ conference in Bonn in 2012. I remember listening to the speakers and thinking, “Hold on: this is exactly what Foster Wallace was trying to do!” New Realism, broadly understood as a paradigm shift in contemporary thought, does not disregard postmodernism and what it stood stood for. for. It incorporates incorporates postpostmodernism’s ideas and styles, but wants to move forward and recover more down-to-earth down-to-earth and sincere topics.
Hence it deals with lived reality reality rather than responses to culture, with objects rather than thought, and so forth. David Foster Wallace’ Wallace’ss work seems to be the perfect perfect literary expression of this: he dared to back away from ironic watching and shunned self-consciousness and fashionable ennui, choosing to deal instead with “plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions … with reverence and conviction.” His declared aim was to write in a way that would would be “morally “morally passionate, passionate, and passionately moral.” Foster Wallace utterly scorned metanarrativity – writing which references itself within within a piece of fiction, and which is the postmodern literary trope par trope par excellence seeing literaliteraexcellence – seeing ture as a “living transaction between humans” and not as a playground for metanarrative show-offs. show-offs. He still did not reject postmodernism postmodernism as a whole, to go back to a nineteenth century type of realism. Instead, he adopted realism’s techniques, albeit with ethical-realist aims. This is exactly what New Realism is trying to do in philosophical terms. As an Italian, can you tell tell us which which Italian philosophers are most worth worth knowing? Well, Well, apart from from Maurizio Ferraris of course, there is a promising young philosopher called Leonardo Caffo, who is also a friend of mine. He developed some interesting theories in the field of animal philosophy. His book Only for Them has just been published by Mimesis International. Also, together with art critic Valentina Sonzogni, he wrote An wrote An Art for the Other Other , published by Lantern Books. It’s an epistolary reflection on animals in art, philosophy and our everyday world, which manages to talk about a tricky subject in a very personal and engaging way. It is a fascinating read. I do recommend it.
• Manuel Carta has an MA in Philosophy Philosophy from the University University of Pisa. Pisa. April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now
17
The Use of Embryos Elizabeth Hemsley considers ethical arguments for and against a new embryo modification procedure. recent decision by the UK government to amend its heart of what is uniquely troubling about the procedure. Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (HFEA) to donation was allow for a procedure called mitochondrial donation was What Mitochondrial Donation Involves preceded by vigorous debate, as is usual in bioethical issues. As I said, said, the purpose purpose of mitochondrial mitochondrial donation donation is to The procedure was lauded by some as a triumph for for scientific replace the defective mitochondria of a mother with the progress, while for others, it has raised the spectre of genetic healthy mitochondria of a donor. There are two methods for engineering and so-called ‘designer babies’. achieving this. The first is pronuclear is pronuclear transfer (or ‘embryo ‘embryo repair ’, ’, transfer (or The case case in favour favour of the proced procedure ure is easily easily expressed. expressed. Mitoto give it its media-friendlier designation). In this method, two chondria, which exist in almost all cells in the body, body, eggs – one from a prospective mother who knows she is at are the biological mechanisms in cells responrisk of passing on defective mitochondria, mitochondria, and one sible for converting food into energy. energy. If from a donor with healthy mitochondria – are mitochondria are defective, they are separately fertilised, creating two embryos. unable to provide sufficient energy for The mother’s mother’s egg is fertilised fertilised with the sperm cells to function. The impacts of this of the intended father, as in IVF; the are different depending on which donor’s egg can be fertilised with donor cells are affected, but they can sperm. The result is one fertilised egg include blindness, deafness, heart, with the genetic inheritance of both liver, or kidney disease, and other prospective parents, including the severe forms of impairment. mother’s defective mitochondria, and one Defective mitochondria are passed fertilised egg with the genetic inheritance from mothers to their children, and of two donors, including healthy mitochona woman who has defective mitochondria. The aim of the procedure is to produce dria cannot guarantee that her children an embryo which has the genetic inheritance of 8- Cell Embryo, will be free from these diseases diseases and their the prospective parents and has healthy mitochon3 days after fertilisation potentially devastating effects. Mitochondrial dria. So a switch has to take place. This switch is actudonation is a procedure carried out on eggs or early ally performed by removing the nucleus of the donor egg – embryos with defective mitochondria, to give her genetic offa cell’s nucleus is where all of the genetic information deterspring healthy mitochondria taken from a donor embryo. mining things like eye and hair colour, innate intelligence and Afterwards, the embryo is implanted back back into the womb, womb, athletic prowess is held. The nucleus from the prospective where it can develop into a baby free from debilitating debilitating mitoparent’s embryo, containing the genetic information to be chondrial disease. It seems a truism that preventing a child inherited from them, is then placed inside the donor fertilised from being born with a potentially life-threatening life-threatening condition is egg. If successful, the outcome is an embryo with the genetic a good, indeed morally necessary, thing, so the case in favour of inheritance of the prospective parents, but the mitochondria of mitochondrial mitochondrial donation is easily understood. the donor mother. The alternative method, maternal spindle transfer (or transfer (or ‘egg The case against against has proven trickier to elucidate. elucidate. Far from ‘egg repair ’), ’), follows this approach, but instead of denying that preventing a child from suffering is morally fertilising the eggs before switching the nuclei, it first replaces required, opponents of mitochondrial mitochondrial donation are engaged in the nucleus of a donor egg with the nucleus of the prospective a complex unpicking of competing moral claims. Their posimother’s egg, and then the resulting egg – which now has tion involves subtle claims about means and ends and moral healthy mitochondria plus genetic information inherited from status. In today’s culture, where deep philosophical soulthe prospective mother – is fertilised with the sperm of the searching so frequently loses out to populism and rhetoric, prospective father. there seems to be little media space to fully express these concerns. This has meant that the challenge to explain why mitoTwo Common Objections chondrial donation seems unethical to some has not been well Opponents to mitochondrial donation, including voices in met. The philosophical concerns that lie at the heart of objecthe Church of England and the Catholic Church, typically tions to it have remained ill-defined and obscure. In this artiexpressed their concerns about it via two routes. One questions cle, I want to examine the prominent arguments that have been the ethics of using and destroying embryos; the other chaladvanced in opposition to mitochondrial donation, and the lenges the safety of mitochondrial donation, donation, and worries about refutations of them provided by its proponents. In doing so, I’ll the unknown ill-effects which could be borne by the recipients, also explain why none of these arguments really get to the who were never able to give their their consent to to it.
A
18 Philosophy Now Now ● April/May April/May 2016
3 1 0 2 E C N E I C
S E F I
L R O
F R E T N E
C E S B A T A
D © C I P O Y R B M
E
Objection 1: The Moral Moral Status of Embryos The belief by some that the destruction of embryos is always ethically impermissible impermissible because life begins at conception pro vides them grounds grounds for having having strong objections objections to the first, embryo replacement , method. This is because the removal and destruction of the donor embryo’s nucleus to accommodate the nucleus of the prospective parents’ embryo, effectively amounts to destruction of the donor embryo. The nucleus contains all of the genetic material which makes us who we are, and unique. Once this is destroyed, the donor embryo is essentially just an empty vessel. Transplanting the nucleus from the prospective parent’s embryo into this vessel effectively transforms it into another embryo. It now carries all of the unique genetic material of the parents’ original embryo, albeit that it is using the healthy mitochondria of the donor. The blueprint of the unborn unborn person that that was contained contained within the nucleus of the donor embryo no longer exists. For those who see even recently recently fertilised fertilised eggs as human human lives, this this is sufficient to make the procedure ethically impermissible. impermissible. targeted objection to However, this complaint fails as a targeted objection se, because it ignores the fact that mitochondrial mitochondrial donation per donation per se, in the UK and elsewhere, early embryos are already legally experimented with and destroyed in labs conducting stem-cell research. In this respect, mitochondrial donation does not entail anything that’s not already happening. As a society, we are a long way past the point of holding embryos as sacred entities with a moral status anywhere near equivalent to that of living, breathing people. Insistence upon the absolute moral status of embryos ignores the reality of how they are already viewed and treated. treated. A more socially realistic realistic argument would couch the moral status of embryos relative to grown human beings. The view that it is okay to use embryos for scientific purposes, if this will help to minimise human suffering, can then be accommodated on the basis that the lives of grown people are generally held to be more valuable than those of embryos. By this reasoning, stem cell research is off the hook, and proponents of mitochondrial donation can now argue that by the same logic, it too is off the hook. At the cost of one fertilised egg, they claim, mitochondrial donation can prevent a human being from suffering, and possibly from dying a premature death. It is therefore permissible under the same justification as stem-cell research.
Embryonic protests
However, However, as I will argue, the attempt to weigh the moral value of a destroyed embryo embryo against the moral value value of an adult adult human life is disingenuous when the adult human life in question would not exist independently of the destroyed embryo. This is not not the main ethical ethical issue in this situation. situation. So for for those who are not not committed to to a view of embryos as morally sacrosacrosanct, but who nevertheless want to say that there is something worrying about about mitochondrial mitochondrial donation, donation, the idea that fertilised fertilised eggs are morally inviolable provides only a straw-man argument, and unanswered concerns remain. Objection 2: Unknown Risks The second common common objection objection to mitochondrial mitochondrial donation donation is that we cannot be sure of its safety, and that unborn children, unable to give their consent, will be its guinea-pigs, with unknown risks. This objection objection expresses expresses a concern concern about what the physic physical al impacts of this procedure might be on the children it creates. It is a valid concern, but one which relates to the stage of scientific development the procedure is currently at, rather than to anything essential about the procedure in itself. These concerns about the unknowns of mitochondrial donation will be addressed in time, and do not have much to say about the legitise. All new medical and scientific dismacy of the procedure per procedure per se. coveries take us into uncharted territory. territory. For those who accept that safety concerns are inevitable in any new and progressive procedure, this argument fails to capture anything fundamentally and uniquely troubling about mitochondrial donation. A More Convincing Concern Notwithstanding Notwithstanding the two common objections outlined above, there remains something unsettling about the legalisation of mitochondrial donation that nags to be addressed. Basically, the third objection is that legalising this procedure places us on the slippery slope of a type of consumerist mentality, at the bottom of which is the chilling notion of babies designed by their parents to exhibit certain ‘favourable’ genetic traits, and discarded when they fail to do so. This objection objection comes closest closest to explaining explaining the intuitive intuitive disquiet that many feel when confronted with the prospect of genetic manipulation. It is a disquiet that is difficult to pin down, but it has its foundations in the notion that we should not seek to choose what type of people are allowed to exist. Harvard ethicist Michael Sandel attempts to explain this in his book The Case Against Perfection Perfection (2007). He argues firstly that one virtue of parenthood parenthood lies in the fact that “more than any other human relationships” it teaches and urges an “openness to the unbidden.” For Sandel, the decision by parents to genetically alter their unborn child alters this dynamic, and so restricts the opportunity for the unconditional unconditional accepting love that normally exists from a parent towards a child. Sandel also points to the argument of German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, that in order to think of our April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 19
selves as free, we must understand ourselves as originating through a natural process, or at least through a process that’s not controlled or dictated by another person. For Habermas, a child who is designed by their parents would not truly be free, because they owe essential features of themselves to the deliberate choices of another. Defenders of mitochondrial donation dismiss concerns related to genetic engineering, such as the slippery slope argument, as misplaced. They point out that the prospective parent’s potential child undergoes no significant change as a result of the procedure, save for benefitting from the provision of healthy mitochondria. The mitochondria this embryo inherits accounts for less than 0.1% of the genetic material that makes up a person. person. Replacing the defective defective mitochondria of an embryo has no influence over crucial genetic traits such as eye colour, hair colour, height, or innate intelligence. As such, its proponents argue that the procedure is not genetic engineering in the sense that producing a ‘designer baby’ would be. Its effects, effects, they argue, are purely and and straightforstraightfor wardly medical . An embryo which was unhealthy is now healthy, and all other things remain equal. However, even if we accept this interpretation of the process as not being genetic engineering (and I don’t accept it), it does not dispel fears that mitochondrial donation could mark the opening of a floodgate through which the tide of genetic engineering inevitably crashes. This is the ‘slippery slope’ worry: that the acceptance of mitochondrial donation will also make (other forms of) genetic engineering more likely. For instance, before the new legislation, it was prohibited in the UK to use in fertility treatment any sperm, egg or embryo that had been genetically altered in any way, way, either through changes to its nuclear DNA (contained in the nucleus), or through changes to its mitochondrial DNA (in the mitochondria). The HFEA is now amended to allow for the alteration of eggs and embryos only for the updating of mitochondrial DNA. Proponents point out that this change in legislation in no way permits changes to the essential attributes of unborn children. For that type of change to be permitted, further legislation allowing for changes to the nuclear DNA of sperm, eggs, or embryos e mbryos would need to 20 Philosophy Now Now ● April/May April/May 2016
be passed. So genetic engineering of the kind objected to by Sandel and Habermas is no closer to being legal as a result of the amendments allowing mitochondrial donation, at least in the UK. But there is something more to the worry about about the genetic slippery slippery slope slope than a straightforward straightforward concern about what practices an amendment to to the law might permit. There are also concerns that once we justify the removal of initial conceptual boundaries, for instance between a genetically altered and a genetically unaltered embryo, there will be little to prevent us from continuing down that path: if we can justify erasing erasing the distinction distinction between an altered and an unaltered embryo, why not also also the distinction distinction between altering mitochondrial DNA and altering nuclear DNA? This worry attempts attempts to grasp at something of of ethical significance significance about the precedent the legalisation of mitochondrial donation donation sets. For the remainder of this article, I will try to set out what I take that to be. A Worrying Precedent As a procedure, procedure, mitochondrial mitochondrial donation donation creates a uniquely problematic scenario not previously encountered, and not yet adequately addressed from an ethical standpoint. ‘Embryo repair’ mitochondrial donation donation creates two embryos, one of which exists purely as a means of ensuring the healthy healthy development of the other. Regardless of what we judge the moral status of embryos to be (equal to grown humans, or less valuable), the two embryos created here must be judged as having the same moral status as each other. And yet one must be destroyed to facilitate the healthy development of the other. other. To To my knowled knowledge, ge, the challenge challenge of how how this trade-off trade-off between the two embryos can be ethically justified has not been adequately acknowledged or addressed anywhere in public debate. Instead, a higher moral status has simply been assumed for the embryo with defective mitochondria, and justifications for mitochondrial donation have focussed on the necessity of the procedure if this embryo is to develop into a healthy infant. As discussed discussed,, many have attempted attempted to justify justify the destructio destruction n of the donor embryo by alluding to the medical necessity of doing so for preventing the suffering of the human being that the other embryo will (hopefully) become. However, how can the destruction of one embryo be justified by the need to guarantee the health of a person, since either embryo might have become a person? We are left wondering why the well-being of the person that one embryo has the potential to be is to be valued so much more highly (and indeed at the cost of) the person that the other embryo has the potential to be. Someone might argue that the embryos possess a different moral status to one another in virtue of the value that the prospective parents place on their own embryo, as the one which will hopefully hopefully become become their child. child. But while while we can accept that the prospective parents might have an understand-
Regardless of what we judge the moral status of embryos to be (equal to grown humans, or less valuable), the two embryos created here must be judged as having the same moral status as each other ot her.. able reason for preferring the embryo which inherited its DNA from them, this does not naturally translate into a justification for the objective moral preference for that embryo. Each of us is likely to prefer our own family members to total strangers, for example; but this does not automatically afford our own loved ones greater moral status. So it remains to be demonstrated how the destruction of one embryo in favour of another can be ethically justified from an objective standpoint. We We are now now getting getting closer closer to what is uniquely uniquely troubling troubling about a decision to legalise mitochondrial donation. The justification for the legalisation of this procedure is that some parents would prefer to have genetic offspring offspring rather rather than than adopt adopt or opt opt for surrogacy. Proponents of the medical necessity of mitochondrial donation recognise however that (as with stem cell research) a justification based on the prevention of human suffering carries greater moral urgency than one based on the satisfaction of human preferences. But as I outlined, that justification does not exist in any independent sense. Rather, we have the favouring of one potential person over another, and it is ultimately the preference of the prospective parents that pro vides the the justificat justification ion for for assigning assigning a higher moral moral status status to one embryo over the other. Now we seem to be not only on the edge of a slippery slope, but rapidly hurtling down one. Mitochondrial donation requires the creation of an embryo which will only only ever exist as as a donor donor,, but which has no moral status, status, and this is not necessitated by any morally urgent ends, such as research that could save the lives or prevent the suffering of hundreds of thousands of future humans. Rather, it serves the ends of ensuring the healthy development and flourishing of another, subjectively preferred embryo. What is so troubling about mitochondrial donation, then, is that it necessitates a sce 0 1 0 2 S E R U T C I
P T H G I L H C R A E
S X O
F ©
nario whereby we sanction the destruction of one like entity in favour of another based purely on our subjective preferences. This sets a worrying new precedent about about the types of choices and trade-offs that can be justified when assigning moral status to morally equivalent ‘pre-person’ entities, if these choices and trade-offs will satisfy the subjective wants of an existing society, or, as with mitochondrial donation, of a handful of its members. There seems to be something rather con sumerist about sumerist about the idea that an embryo (or even a human egg) can be utilised in such a way – that is, not to address the morally pressing ends of reducing acute human suffering, but to satisfy subjective wants. If our subjective desires can create the justification for the trade-off necessitated by mitochondrial donation, what other types of trade-off might our social preferences eventually justify? What about a scenario akin to that described by Kazuo Ishiguro in his dystopian novel Never Let Me Go (2010), where human embryos are cloned to grow adults specifically for organ donation? Just as the donor embryo in mitochondrial donation is never considered to have moral status equivalent to the embryo it will ‘save’, these clones are not considered to have moral status equivalent to the humans their harvested organs save. The difference is only that this clone scenario treats one grown human as merely a donor and another as a morally valuable entity, whereas mitochondrial donation treats one embryo as a merely a donor and another as a morally valuable entity. The real justification remains the same: that existing people will achieve a higher happiness quotient if the donor is created than if not. And having now created a precedent whereby moral status is not objective, but is determined by the wants and preferences of an existing society, we may come to find that preventing the creation of designer babies is Just another another donor clone: clone: the least of our worries. A still from the movie Never Let Me Go
© ELIZABETH HEMSLEY 2016
Elizabeth Elizabeth is doing doing a PhD in in Politi Political cal Theory at the the UniUniversity of Hong Kong. She has an MA in Philosophy Philosophy from the Universi University ty of of Edinburgh. Edinburgh.
O
G E
M T E
L
R E V E
N M O R F L L T
S
• An early expression expression of of the ideas contained in this article appeared in Athena in Athena (imagineathena.com), thena.com), and I am grateful to readers of the magazine for their comments.
April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 21
On Moral Arguments Against
Recreational Drug Use
Rob Lovering considers some of the arguments, and what they amount to.
D
ecember 5, 2015, marked the eighty-second anniversary of the United States’ repeal of the National Prohibition Act, an erstwhile constitutional ban on ‘intoxicating beverages’. The Act’s repeal did not bring an end in the U.S. to the legal prohibition of every intoxicating substance, of course – the recreational use of cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, and many other intoxicating substances remains illegal; but it did reinstate alcohol as one of many intoxicating substances – of many drugs , lest there be any confusion – that Americans are legally permitted to use recreationally recreationally.. The list also includes caffeine and nicotine. One might wonder why all countries currently legally permit the recreational use of some drugs, such as caffeine, nicotine, and (usually) alcohol, but prohibit the recreational use of others, such as cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and (usually) mari juana. The answer answer lies lies not simply in the harm the the use of of these these drugs might cause, but in the perceived immorality of their use. As former former U.S. U.S. Drug Czar William William Bennett once put put it, “I find no merit in the legalizers’ case. The simple fact is that drug use is wrong. And the moral argument, in the end, is the most Drugs: Should Sh ould We We Legalize, Decriminalize compelling argument” ((Drugs: or Deregulate?, Deregulate?, ed. Jeffrey A. Schaler, 1998, p.65). Yet, despite strong rhetoric from the prohibitionists, it is surprisingly difficult to discern their reasons for believing that the recreational use of certain drugs is morally wrong. Most of the time, no reasons are even provided: it is simply declared, à la Bennett, that using some drugs recreationally is morally impermissible. This is not not to say that that there are no reasons for believing that using some drugs recreationally is wrong. Indeed, there is a wide array of arguments for the immorality of certain recreational drug use, ranging from the philosophically philosophically rudimen-
22 Philosophy Now Now ● April/May April/May 2016
tary to the philosophically philosophically sophisticated. But the vast majority of these arguments are unsuccessful, unsuccessful, and those that succeed are quite limited in scope. Some Rudimentary Arguments Take, Take, for example, example, one of the philosophically philosophically rudimentary rudimentary arguments: Recreational drug use is generally unhealthy for the user; therefore, recreational drug use is wrong. is generally unhealthy Now it is true that recreational drug use is generally for the user in one respect or another, to one degree or another. Just Just how unhealthy it is for the user depends not only on which drug, but on the amount and frequency of its use, the manner in which it is administered, administered, the health health of the person person using using it, and more. In any case, there is little question that recreational drug use is generally unhealthy for the user. But does it follow then that recreational drug use is wrong ? It does if the mere fact that an activity is generally unhealthy – harmful – to the one who engages or, more broadly, generally harmful – in it renders that activity morally wrong. However, this idea is very difficult difficult to justify justify.. Indeed, there seem to be conditions under which harming oneself, even damaging one’s health, does not involve wrongdoing, such as when the harm is done with one’s voluntary, voluntary, informed consent. From boxing to BASE BASE jumping, playing playing contact sports to mixed martial arts, snowboarding to bull-riding – each of these activities can be and often is unhealthy to the individuals who engage in them; but none of them seem to be thereby morally wrong when those engaging in them do so with their voluntary, voluntary, informed consent. Imprudent, perhaps, perhaps, but not immoral. Or consider people who eat unhealthy food and refuse to exercise. Their voluntary and informed eating of unhealthy food and refusing to exercise
does not seem to be morally wrong in and of itself. Here’s another philosophically rudimentary argument: Recreational drug use is unnatural; therefore, recreational drug use is wrong. Now there are at least seven different meanings of ‘unnatural’ that one may employ in this argument: statistically abnormal or unusual; not practiced by nonhuman animals; does not proceed from an innate desire; violates an organ’s principal purpose; gross or disgusting; artificial; and contrary to divine intention. But regardless of which meaning is employed, this argument is also unsuccessful. Consider just one meaning of ‘unnatural’: ‘artificial’. What’s typically meant by the claim that recreational drug use is artificial is that it involves inducing mental states that would not have occurred were it not for human intervention or contrivance. But what’s wrong with artificially inducing mental states? This is precisely what individuals taking medication for depression or bipolar disorder do; yet hardly anyone believes that taking medication for depression or bipolar disorder is wrong. Granted, artificially artificially inducing inducing mental states for depresdepression or bipolar disorder differs from artificially inducing mental states for recreational purposes in a particular and perhaps morally significant way: the former use is medical in nature while the the latter latter is not. not. But But if the the claim, claim, as here, here, is simply that it is wrong to artificially induce mental states, then why the mental states are artificially induced makes no difference to the argument. Furthermore, even if the reason the mental states are artificially induced were relevant to the argument, this would not necessarily entail that artificially inducing mental states for recreational purposes renders doing so wrong. Indeed, we have good reasons to think that artificially inducing mental states for recreational purposes is morally permissible in some cases: by way of of listening listening to music or reading reading a novel, novel, for for instance. instance. Both Both the music and the novel are products of human contrivance. To that extent, the mental states induced by listening to music or reading a novel are induced artificially. Nevertheless, there seems to be nothing immoral about artificially inducing mental states by doing either of these things. There are many other philosophically philosophically rudimentary rudimentary arguarguments: one grounds the supposed wrongness of recreational drug use in the claim that it squanders the user’s user’s talents; another in the claim that the pleasure of recreational drug use is unearned, and so on – but let this suffice for now. now. Equivalent analogies can be cited to show why these other arguments don’t don’t work either. More Sophisticated Arguments More philosophi philosophically cally sophistic sophisticated ated arguments arguments for the moral moral wrongness wrongness of certain certain recreationa recreationall drug drug use fare no better better.. ConConsider the following argument: By using drugs recreationally, recreationally, the user instrumentalizes himself; therefore, recreational drug use is wrong. wrong. To instrume instrumentali ntalize ze oneself oneself is to use oneself oneself for a purpose purpose to which one, as a rational moral agent, cannot in principle agree. (A rational moral agent is someone who can think in terms of moral reasons and act on that basis.) Most simply put, to instrumentalize oneself is to agree to behavior to which one could not rationally assent. For instance, if Joe necessarily desires x, then Joe cannot cannot rationally rationally agree to behavior behavior that thwarts x, since doing so would involve contradicting himself – for were Joe to
assent to behavior that thwarts that which he necessarily desires, Joe would be at once desiring both x and not- x. So, does recreational drug use involve using oneself for a purpose to which one cannot in principle agree? That depends on what the purpose purpose of recreational recreational drug drug use is. This, This, in turn, turn, depends partly on the drug in question. For the sake of space, let us consider the recreational use of just one drug: marijuana. Typically Typically,, the purpose purpose of using marijuana recreationally recreationally is to get high. The question, then, is whether the marijuana user can in principle rationally agree to the end of getting high. At first glance, it appears she can – the individual agreeing to get high does not on the face of things seem to be contradicting herself in doing so. But to be sure about this, we need to determine whether a pot smoker necessarily desires something that getting high thwarts. Although lots of things might might be proposed proposed here, but but again for the sake of space, I will consider just one: Perhaps as a rational moral agent, the pot smoker necessarily desires all that is required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral agency. And it may be that not being high – in a word, sobriety – is required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral agency. Two questions now arise: do rational moral agents necessarily desire all that is required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral agency? And, is sobriety required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral agency? Properly addressing the first question would involve a lengthy digression into the nature of rational moral agency. Instead, I will simply assume that rational moral agents do necessarily desire all that is required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral agency. This brings brings us to the the second second question: question: Is sobrie sobriety ty require required d for for the preservation and exercise of rational moral agency? Arguably not . To be sure, sobriety may be required for the optimal exercise of rational moral agency, but it is not required for the exercise, much less the preservation, of rational moral agency. The high individual can and typically does think in terms of moral reasons and act on that basis. As Jeffrey Reiman writes, “Even drugbeclouded individuals know the difference between right and wrong and can can underst understand and when they are hurtin hurting g others others and and so so on” (Critical Moral Liberalism: Theory & Practice , 1997, p.89). Getting high, then, does not necessarily thwart all that is required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral agency. Accordingly, the marijuana user can indeed agree in principle to the end of getting high, even given that she necessarily desires all that is required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral agency. Substitute alcohol, cocaine, heroin, or ecstasy for marijuana here, and similar arguments may be proffered for the view that users of these drugs can also agree in principle to the end of these drugs’ intoxicating intoxicating effects – at least up to the point of the incapacity of rational thought. Another philosophically philosophically sophisticated sophisticated argument for the wrongness of recreational drug drug use is worth mentioning, mentioning, given its popularity: By using drugs recreationally, the user may become addicted and thereby diminish his autonomy; therefore, recreational drug use is wrong. Perhaps the most important word in this argument is ‘autonomy’. And although there are many definitions of this word, for present purposes we will use ‘the capacity to govern oneself’. oneself ’. April/May April /May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 23
It is clear that, generally speaking, recreational drug users may become addicted to their drug of choice. Indeed, in Drug Legalization: Legalization: For For and Against (eds. Against (eds. Rod L. Evans and Irwin M. Berent, 1994), psychiatrist Michael Gazzaniga estimates that there is a ten per cent chance that any user of any drug will become addicted to it. To To what extent a drug is addictive addictive may be be determined in a number of ways, two of the more common ways being by establishing how likely it is that an occasional user of a drug becomes a habitual user of it; and by establishing how difficult it is for the habitual user to quit (see for instance Jim Leitzel, Regulating Vice: Misguided Prohibitions Prohibitions and Realistic Realistic Controls , 2008, p.61). Under both methods, nicotine is considered the most addictive of commonly-used drugs. Marijuana is much less addictive. Alcohol, heroin, and cocaine all fall somewhere in between nicotine and marijuana. And some recreational drugs, such as LSD and other hallucinogens, are considered virtually non-addictive, non-addictive, if at all: as Brian Penrose writes, writes, “Whatever else may be true of [hallucinogens], they’re more or ting Vice). Vice). less universally recognized as non-addictive” ( Regula ( Regulating However, even given that recreational drug users may become addicted to their drug of choice, and, in turn, diminish their autonomy to a greater or lesser degree, this does not itself render recreational drug use wrong. After all, most of us diminish our capacity to govern ourselves from time to time in ways that appear to be morally innocuous. Consider someone who is having trouble sleeping and decides to take a sleeping pill. In doing so, the individual chooses a course of action that will result in the diminishing of his capacity to govern himself. But does he thereby do something morally impermissible? It seems not. Of course, taking a sleeping pill involves the use of a drug. And since what what is at issue issue here is the the moral status status of using using drugs – recreationally, of course, but using drugs nonetheless – it might be helpful to invoke a case that does not involve the use of a drug. So consider enlisting in the military. Those who do so diminish their capacity to govern themselves rather severely – with respect to where and with whom one resides, when one goes to and gets out of bed, what and when one eats and drinks, whom one considers to be an enemy, whom one considers to be an ally, whose commands one deems authoritative and obeys, what one considers considers to be be acceptable conduct, under what conditions conditions one will will kill another human being, and so on. Even so, it does not seem to be morally wrong to join join the military military – at least, not on the grounds that doing so diminishes one’s capacity to govern oneself. (It may be imprudent in some ways, of course.) This suggests that 24
Now ● April/May Philosophy Now April/May 2016
other cases involving a less-than-extreme diminishing of one’s capacity to govern oneself are not morally wrong either. To To be sure, the diminishing diminishing of one’s one’s capacity to govern oneself that occurs through joining the military is not the result of using a drug. But again, this fact is inconsequential to the argument. If it is precisely the diminishing of one’s capacity to govern oneself that renders certain recreational drug use wrong, as is alleged here, then any activity activity that involves involves the diminishing of one’s capacity to govern oneself will also be wrong, regardless regardless of the means by which which this is achieved. To To make this clear, clear, suppose that that what makes murder morally impermissible impermissible is that it involves the intentional permanent destruction of an innocent individual’s consciousness against their will. On this supposition, any activity that involves the intentional permanent destruction of an innocent individual’s consciousness against their will should be morally impermissible – including the intentional rendering of an innocent comatose against their will. The means individual permanently individual permanently comatose by which the permanent destruction of the individual’s consciousness is achieved is different in the comatose case, of course; but it is the permanent destruction of the individual’s consciousness consciousness nonetheless – so rendering someone comatose will be wrong wrong for the same same reason that that murder is wrong. Similarly, if diminishing one’s capacity to govern oneself is morally wrong in and of itself, then joining the the military is thereby morally wrong. But this is implausible. There are many other philosophically philosophically sophisticated sophisticated arguments – one which grounds the wrongness of recreational drug use in the claim that it blocks basic goods; another which grounds it in the claim that it degrades the user, and so on – but the preceding considerations will do for now. Much more can can also be said said about each of the arguments arguments above, and I have done just that in my book A book A Moral Moral Defense of Recreational Drug Use (2015). Suffice it to say that if the objections that I have raised against these arguments for the immorality of recreational drug use are cogent, then to that extent the moral case for legally prohibiting recreational drug use is undermined. © ROB LOVERING 2016
Rob Lovering is Associate Associate Professor of Philosophy Philosophy at the College College of Staten Island, City University of New York. His book A book A Moral Defense of Recreational Drug Use is available from Palgrave Macmillan.
Brief Liv Li ves
Pierre Hadot (1922-2010) Thomas Dylan Daniel on what one Frenchman says to anglophone philosophy.
D
espite the near-ubiquity of analytic philosophy’s abstract, narrow, questioning procedures these days, there are still philosophers philosophers who pay little attention to its puzzles. Some instead spend their time focused upon the activity of philosophy itself. Pierre Hadot (1922-2010) was one such philosopher. His essays and books have been making their way from their native French into English translations for three decades now, largely due to the work of Michael Chase. Hadot’s work focuses heavily upon the historical and social aspects of the philosophical minds he finds himself engaged with – mainly ancient Greek thinkers. These thinkers heavily influenced his critique of overly theoretical but practically vacuous analytical philosophical traditions. He criticized the analytic tradition implicitly rather than explicitly, but, despite his focus upon presenting an alternative, this criticism is among the most effective of all such efforts undertaken in the Twentieth Century"
poignantly states some of the overarching views Hadot held regarding philosophy: philosophy: “The experience recounted in [Thoreau’s book] Walden seems… extremely interesting for us because in choosing to live in the woods for some time, Thoreau wanted wanted to perform perform a philosophical philosophical act, that is to say, say, to devote himself to a certain mode of philosophical life that included… manual labor and poverty, but also opened up to him an immensely enlarged perception of the world.” (The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 19, no. 3, 2005, trans. J.A. Simmons.)
In Walden, Hadot saw philosophical philosophical action, which is close to the way of life he saw the ancients as having lived. The critique of analytical philosophers evident in this perspective, then, is that “in being content with theoretical discourse, they encourage men to keep living in an absurd manner” ( ibid ). ).
Background Born in Paris on 21st February 1922, Pierre Hadot had two brothers, and all three of them became priests. Hadot was assigned to compulsory labor during World War II, and was ordained a priest in 1944 at the age of 22. His work in the Church led him to philosophy philosophy.. He eventually left the priesthood when he disagreed with a Papal Papal encyclical. Hadot translated translated Marius Victorinus Victorinus with Father Paul Henry Henry,, initially looking for fragments of Plotinus, and was led to fragmented works by Porphyry instead. However, his project of studying ancient Greek literature was in no way hindered by the Church. In fact, the Christian writers whose works Hadot Hadot studied contained references references to the ancient Greeks which simply could not have been found anywhere else. And the great Classical thinkers, such as Porphyry, Plotinus, and Plato, were absolutely central to the development of Hadot’s thought. Hadot was more than a philosopher: he was also a historian of philosophy whose focus was a desire to understand the ancients as they understood themselves. Pratique des Hadot was a lecturer at École Pratique Hautes Etudes from 1964-86, and from 19821991 also at the Collège de France . He died at Orsay on April 24, 2010, at the age of 88.
6 1 0 2 W E R D N
A C M N E R R A
D © T O D A
H E R R E I
P F O T I A R T R O
P
Hadot’s Philosophical Vision From his well-informed vantage point, Hadot published a piece about American philosopher Henry Thoreau Thoreau in 1994 in French entitled ‘There Are Nowadays Professors of Philosophy, but not Philosophers’. This work April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 25
Brief Liv Li ves Hadot does not entirely despise theoretical discourse, and allows for its necessity; his contention is merely that there needs to be action involved as well. As Luc Brisson and Michael Chase note in their essay, essay, ‘Behind the the Veil Veil – In Memory of Pierre Pierre Hadot’ (in Common Knowledge 17, 3, 2011): “Hadot’s writings are not only works of erudition; they are also exhortations to adopt a philosophical way of life, in any one of its many guises... Hadot’s writings make us understand that, in antiquity, religion and philosophy were inseparable; that interpreting an author went beyond an objective reading of texts… and that philosophical argument could not be divided off from everyday life.”
Indeed, the bulk of Hadot’s work seems to revolve around the necessity of reclaiming the activity associated with the ancient tradition of thought. In this way, Hadot runs counter to the present popular analytic trend, which seems to be more preoccupied with truths than life – including delineating the sorts of actions which should which should be be taken by individuals in particular situations. The assumption underlying an analytic approach to an ethical problem such as Philippa Foot’s trolley problem – about whether one should divert a runaway trolley to kill one innocent person instead of letting it kill five innocents – is that there must be some truth which is to be understood by asking people analytical questions and collecting and analysing the answers they give. Hadot’s interests involve an entirely different focus: philosophical individuals, philosophical schools, philosophical lives. However, Hadot might approve of Foot’s problem, if it’s employed in an introductory-level philosophy course and applied as a means of helping students learn to do philosophy. Hence, it is not precisely fair to categorize him as an opponent of analytical philosophy. Rather, his idea is to and philosophy as a way embrace both analytical methodology and philosophy of life – so long as neither is entirely neglected. Philosophy As A Way Of Life Two Two of his books that have been translated translated into English English provide us with further metaphilosophical metaphilosophical insight into Hadot: Philosophy as a Way Way of Life (initially published in French in 1981) and What Is Ancient Philosophy? (first published in French in 1995). The latter book is the smoother read, but the former is the more substantial contribution, contribution, consisting of a deeper account of Hadot’s particular philosophical themes. Philosoph Philosophyy as a Way Way of Life explains that the goal of history is to structure an account of events from which conclusions can be drawn. In contrast contrast to Michel Foucault – who advocates the ceaseless development of new readings of texts and events – Hadot believed that it is possible to understand the past once a sufficiently cogent account has been given of it. Yet the project of understanding the past remains incomplete, due to the faults of historians who have come before. As Hadot writes, “error was the result of bad exegetical mistranslation, and faulty understanding. Nowadays, however, historians seem to consider all exegetical thought as the result of mistakes or misunderstand Philosophyy as a Way of Life, Life, trans. Michael Chase, p.74). ings” ( Philosoph In an essay called ‘Spiritual Exercises’, Hadot connects ancient and more modern thinkers around the theme of reasoning in conjunction with living. Reading is not a departure from 26
Now ● April/May Philosophy Now April/May 2016
this central motif: “And yet we have forgotten how to read: how to pause, liberate ourselves from our worries, return into ourselves, and leave aside our search for subtlety and originality, in order to meditate calmly, ruminate, and let the texts speak to us” (p.109). Hadot’s anxiety about the crises of information, entertainment and advertising confronted by modern people represents a common thread with other philosophers, and his solution to this problem is to focus upon reading, upon thinking, upon living a well-reasoned life. Other contemporary thinkers working working on similar similar issues issues include include Derrida, Derrida, Deleuze, Deleuze, Foucault, Foucault, MacIntyre MacIntyre and Pirsig, to name name just a handful; handful; but but it is no accident that, of all these philosophers, the one most focused upon maintaining and encouraging the practical application of philosophical thought is the one whose work is the most accessible. What Is Ancient Philosophy? Hadot’s concept of the circumstances within which philosoPhilosophy?. He phy finds itself becomes clear in What Is Ancient Philosophy?. frames the discussion within this brief characterization: Philoposia, for instance, was the pleasure and interest one took “ Philoposia, in drinking; philotimia drinking; philotimia was was a propensity propensity to acquire honors. honors. Philosophia, Philosophia, therefore, would be the interest one took in wisdom” wisdom” (trans. (trans. Michael Michael Chase, Chase, 2002, 2002, p.16). p.16). Here Here again, Hadot thinks that the intersection of theoretical and practical wisdom is the ground upon which good life is produced.“From this perspective, then, we may oppose a purely theoretic philosophical discourse to a practical, lived philosophical life” (p.80). Hadot’s philosophical viewpoint is perhaps summed up best in his statement that “Reflection is inseparable from the will” (p.273). By discussing the successful ideas of the past, Hadot makes salient points about the present – his reading of ancient philosophy provides a clear, accessible platform from which to pretice sent his vision of the importance of remembering to prac to practice philosophy. By contrast, wisdom is treated by the analytic tradition as though it’s like a game of chess, in that the solution to the problem is all that’s really relevant. Well, Hadot is not going to push this line quite that far; but he does want to say that philosophical reasoning is in itself very important to human beings – a key part of the art of being a good human. Nicomachean Ethics , This point is easily discovered discovered in Aristotle’ Aristotle’s Nicomachean among other ancient Greek texts. It is worth noting that Hadot did not deride what might be seen as opposing viewpoints. In fact, there is seldom any reference to the analytic philosophy of the Twentieth Twentieth Century in his work at all. all. By By ignoring ignoring those those who partook partook of of the analytic analytic style style – from Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore to Robert Nozick and John Rawls – Hadot Hadot made clear the absolu absolute te differe difference nce between between the way in which these thinkers pursue philosophy from their armchairs and the way he believed that it should be practiced throughout life. Although this does constitute a conflict, the emphasis upon reflective, philosophical, living evident in these works works is merely intended intended to quietly quietly return return our focus focus to the the notion that philosophy can be lived as well as spoken of. Though many such efforts were made, no other Twentieth Twentieth Century philosopher was as effective in this pursuit as Hadot. © THOMAS DYLAN DANIEL 2016
Thomas Dylan Daniel recently graduated from Texas State Univer sity with an MA MA in Applied Philosophy Philosophy and Ethics. Ethics.
On the Philosophy of
Conservatism
Musa al-Gharbi outlines the varieties of conservative stances.
W
hat do conservatives stand for? One popular idea is that conservatives cling to tradition and resist change. There is an element of truth to this descripdo value tradition tion, in that conservatives do value tradition – albeit albeit not not for for its its own sake, but (following Edmund Burke), out of the conviction that systems and institutions that have proven themselves over the course of generations should not be hastily cast aside in favor of the untested (and typically ill-fated) vogue. But ultimately, this is a featur a featuree of conservatism rather than its essence. Conservatism is a response to progressivism. The point of divergence between them relates to the (im)perfectibility (im)perfectibility of man – a centuries-long debate with theological origins but profound present political implications. Progressives tend to view history in a generally linear fashion: they think that as a result of mankind’s essential goodness, or rationality, or else as a result of immutable suprahuman forces, humanity is on a trajectory towards some ‘end of history’ (the notion of progress is incomprehensible without an end-state. What would constitute progress on an infinite line?). Insofar as this climax is viewed as utopian and so desirable in nature, progressives often believe it is their responsibility to hasten this outcome, or even try to instantiate their ideal in the here-and-now. here-and-now. They typically view governments as a means to achieve these ends, appealing to some conception of the Good that the state is supposed to realize, often by means of some presumed superior mode of social arrangement. This is the impulse that undergirded the Enlightenment, Marxism, and myriad other revolutionary movements – and its negation forms the basis for conservatism.
Classical Conservatism Given their rejection of political perfectionism, conservatives tend to envision a much smaller role for the state. However, unlike (political) libertarians, conservatives emphasize community over the individual. individual. Within communities, communities, people are held to be responsible for, and accountable to, one another, without much much need for state state interference – typically by upholding traditional values and modes of social organization. Civil rights, civil liberties, and private property, property, are viewed as essential bulwarks against potential government overreach. The function of the state is not to promote any particular socio-political socio-political arrangement, but instead to protect and promote conditions for communities to arrange themselves as they see fit – principally through the enforcement of agreedupon rules defining relations in and between communities, and by providing a forum for resolving disputes. The state also serves as a vehicle for protecting against outside threats and advancing common interests abroad. However, the scope of such duties is narrow: governments are not responsible for citizens of other countries, and they have no more of a mandate to advance particular ideals or socio-cultural arrangements internationally than they do domestically. Accordingly, the state should avoid costly, risky, or open-ended foreign commitments unless absolutely necessary. It should similarly abstain from jeopardizing public safety, interests or resources, by needlessly threatening or otherwise antagonizing other states.
Other Conservative Strains Classical conservatism conservatism calls for realism and restraint, both domestically and abroad, then. Unfortunately, many contemporary politicians who describe themselves as ‘conservative’ reflect little of this. So-called ‘paleoconservatives’ embrace foreign policy restraint, but (often because they wrongly conflate pluralism with relativism) hold that society should be premised more-or-less exclusively upon Christian-derived Western norms and values – in the process providing intellectual intellectual cover for xenophobes or people who are otherwise intolerant in regard to immigration and diversity. Many associated with this line of thinking view with suspicion and sometimes contempt attempts by non-WASPs to form enclaves within society to protect or promote their cultural identities, generally holding that minorities have a duty to integrate with the prevailing order: a convenient position to take insofar as this order happens to reflect one’s own values and interests. The self-described self-described ‘neoconservatives’ ‘neoconservatives’ are less concerned about social issues, and yet embrace ‘progressive absolutism’ in terms of foreign policy and national security. They hold that it is the responsibility of national governments to protect and advance the American-centric unipolar world order by virtually any means. These include forcibly spreading liberalism around the world; destroying incompatible political and economic systems and institutions; institutions; surveilling and disrupting internal dissent by means of pervasive law enforcement and security apparatuses; and by deploying oversimplified ‘good vs evil’ narratives that portray any skepticism of or resistance to their agenda as dangerously naïve or even outright traitorous. For the sake of political expediency, most conservative libertarians seem to affiliate themselves with one of these camps, according to their priorities. But more generally, conservative libertarians tend to overemphasize individualism and a univer salized albeit salized albeit minimal government, with a streamlined set of rules, duties and rights that uniformly apply to all citizens. Classical conservatism instead emphasizes communities. Perhaps its fullest realization would be a legally pluralistic system which empowers groups of like-minded citizens to arrange themselves as they see fit – thus including radically different economic, legal and political processes within their domains – ensuring that all citizens can live in a society which reflects their own interests and values, rather than being forced into the secular zero-sum zero-sum pluralistic pluralistic game over who gets to define the supposedly neutral position. The closest libertarian approximation of this view is captured in Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia Utopia.. There are also a number of contemporary public intellectuals who have not defined themselves as conservative, but whose work exemplifies strains of classical conservative thought, and could serve as an accessible introduction to it. Among them are Nassim Nicholas Taleb, William Easterly, Easterly, and Evengy Morozov Morozov.. © MUSA AL-GHARBI 2016
Musa al-Gharbi isis a cognitive sociologist affiliated affiliated with the the Southwest Initiative for the Study of Middle East Conflicts (SISMEC). Connect to his work and social media via his website, fiatsophia.org April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 27
Philosophy & C Robin Small will have a Martini – stirred, not shaken.
S
everal books on wine and philosophy have appeared in recent years. Amongst these, Roger Scruton’s I Drink Therefore I Am (2011) stands out to me as a discussion that treats the subject in detail. But a striking feature of that book is its dismissive mention of cocktails. Scruton clearly thinks that getting drunk is the only reason for drinking a cocktail – or rather, for drinking more than one, since he assumes you will keep going until you reach that goal. That looks like a recycling of the old line about the quickest way out of Manchester being a bottle of gin. But linking cocktails with binge drinking is just a ruse, which in turn suggests a more positive response to them. Might it be that something something of philosophical philosophical interest can be found in cocktails, as much as has been found in wine? I can see one problem already. Discussions of wine – and especially of philosophy and wine – tend to be earnest. Wine drinking is evidently a serious business. In contrast, cocktails have a reputation for being frivolous. Many of them come with straws, little umbrellas, and pieces of fruit, and go by silly names. Surely no thoughtful discourse on, say, the nature of love, can be given with one of those concoctions in hand? Maybe not. Still, I want want to argue that that cocktails have theoretical dimensions as interesting as the ideas explored by philosophers of wine; and given that so much theorising has been done about wine, it’s high time to do something similar for cocktails. Eventually I will go a step further, and argue, or at least insinuate, that cocktails and philosophy have some strong affinities. There Are Cocktails, And There Is The Martini But first, anyone writing about cocktails must acknowledge the Dry Martini as a special case. Its place in a philosophy of cocktails corresponds to the place of the Good in Plato’s metaphysics: it is the necessary point of reference, the absolute standard and ideal to which everything else aspires. What is it about the Martini Martini that gives it this unique unique status? First of all, a striking abstractness. It is colourless and clear (I assume here that it has been stirred, not shaken). And it is simple, in the sense of having no parts. It is true that a Martini is made by combining gin and vermouth. But this is misleading, because you are not drinking vermouth vermouth – only only using it to modify the gin’s taste so as to prevent it from cloying. For this reason, any Martini recipe that speaks of ‘parts’ should be read with scepticism scepticism and disapproval. disapproval. At the same time, the Martini also has concrete qualities: it is cold, has a distinctive taste, and it packs a punch. This combination of abstractness and intense immediacy is a key to the cocktail’s distinction as a drink. Within philosophica philosophicall writing, the nearest parallel parallel is the aphoaphorism, as practiced by thinkers such as Schopenhauer and, above all, Nietzsche. “Every word is a prejudice” Nietzsche says in Human, in Human, All Too Human (1878). In just five words, this aphorism offers readers a whole theory of language and communication. A Martini is the cocktail equivalent of that. 28 Philosophy Now Now ● April/May April/May 2016
James Bond Bond drinks a Martini, dirty, in Spectre
5 1 0 2 S E R U T C I
P A I B M U L O
C / M G M © L L I T
S E R T C E P
S
Of course, there are variations on the classic Martini. I suspect that the main point of the James Bond version has to do with ordering ordering the cocktail rather than with with drinking it – that is, with giving instructions instructions to a bartender, bartender, preferably in front of of an admiring female audience. That said, the result is certainly drinkable – assuming that we are speaking of a Martini with added vodka, not one in which vodka simply replaces gin. Phenomenology of the Cocktail To To begin, it is is worth noting noting that cocktails cocktails have had a definite influence on Twentieth Century philosophy (and cocktails only existed in ancestral forms before then). A well-known school of modern philosophy, French existentialism, owes its very existence to cocktails, or, more exactly, to one cocktail. In her memoirs, Simone de Beauvoir describes her life with Jean-Paul Sartre Sartre in Paris from from 1929 onward thus: “In the evening we would look in at the Falstaff or the College Inn and drink our cocktails like connoisseurs – Bronxes, Sidecars, Bacardis, Alexanders, Martinis. I had a weakness for two specialities – mead cocktails at the Vikings’ Vikings’ Bar, Bar, and apricot apricot cocktails cocktails at the Bec de Gaz on the Rue MontparMontparnasse: what more could the Ritz Bar have offered us?” Life , 1965, p.17, trans. P. Green.) (Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life,
No more is heard of the mead cocktail, and maybe just as well; but the other speciality speciality she mentions has its important important role in a well-known episode that occurred in 1932, when Raymond Aron returned from a year spent in Berlin, where he had discovered Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy: “We “We spent an evening together at the Bec de Gaz in the Rue Montparnasse. We We ordered ordered the special speciality ity of of the house, house, apricot apricot cocktails; cocktails; Aron said, pointing pointing to his glass, ‘You see, my dear fellow, if you are a phenomenologist, you can
talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!’ Sartre turned pale with emotion emotion at this. Here was just just the the thing thing he he had been longing longing to achieve achieve for years – to describe objects just as he saw and touched them, and extract ext ract philosophy from the process. Aron convinced him that phenomenology exactly fitted in with his special preoccupations: by-passing the antithesis of idealism and realism, affirming simultaneously both the supremacy of consciousness and the reality of the visible world as it appears to our senses.” Ibid , p.135. The mistranslation of conscience has been corrected). ( Ibid
Sartre presents his new solution to the central problems of metaphysics in a short essay on intentionality published published in 1939, ‘Intentionality: A Fundamental Feature of Husserl’s intentional – meaning, it is Phenomenology’. Phenomenology’. Consciousness Consciousness is intentional – always about or directed towards something – but a core thought of Husserl’s phenomenology is that this intentionality is not just an inner state: the givenness of things in our experience cannot be thought away and so disposed of, but is a result of our consciousnesses being immersed in the world. So we can know in our very experience that there is a world independent of us. (Hence, we can be realists where cocktails are concerned.) In Sartre’s novel Nausea novel Nausea (1938), this idea of the givenness of the world takes an existential turn when the protagonist Antoine Roquentin Roquentin experiences his environment as a startlingly immediate presence. He reflects: “To exist is simply to be there; there; what exists appears, lets itself be encountered , but you can never deduce it… Everything is gratuitous, that park, this town, and myself. When you realise that, it turns your stomach over”( p.188, trans. R. Baldick). But then, Roquentin is a beer
drinker, and his reflections could be taken as confirming Nietzsche’s identification of beer with “disgruntled heaviness.” What is an apricot apricot cocktail, cocktail, anyway? anyway? Hard to say, say, given that it was made in one particular bar, over eighty years ago. Being based on an apricot liqueur, it must have been a sweet drink, not much to today’s tastes. Does that matter, though? In Simone de Beauvoir’s anecdote, the apricot cocktail is taken as something to be seen and touched, not consumed. Sartre never gave us his philosophical interpretation of the cocktail. Perhaps he agreed with the critic who wrote: “the image that it tries to make philosophy out of cocktails cocktails is just the sort of thing that tends to give g ive phenomenology a bad name” menology ogy + Pedagog Pedagogyy 9, 1991, p.39). (Robert Burch in Pheno in Phenomenol Oddly enough, the writer who has come closest to providing the kind of analysis Sartre should have given is Roger Scruton. Despite some offhandedly slighting comments on Husserl, the treatment of wine drinking in I in I Drink Therefore I Am is a model of orthodox phenomenology, relying on a realist conception of intentionality close to Sartre’s. For an example of this realist conception of intentionality, according to Sartre in his ‘Intentionality’ essay, ‘being dreadful’ is an essential property of a certain Japanese mask, not just our subjective reaction to a certain piece of wood. In the same way, Scruton asserts that when we describe a drink as ‘intoxicating’, we are referring to a quality located in the drink itself and not (as many would argue) talking about our own inner state and pro jecting that out out into the drink drink ( I I Drink Therefore I Am, Am, pp.118–119. See also Scruton’s ‘The Philosophy of Wine’ in Taste,, p.6). Barry Smith, ed., Questions of Taste Metaphysics of the Cocktail Even in his summary dismissal of the cocktail, Scruton puts his finger on one genuine aspect of it: it makes an impact. The same is true of other drinks, of course, and his account of winedrinking makes a similar point. Still, the immediacy of the effect is more noticeable with the cocktail. This impact is not just due to its high alcohol content: coldness is just as important; and presentation, including both look and feel, also plays a part. So let me survey the properties of the cocktail that give it a distinct conceptual character. character. A good way to identify these is to start from features that stand in sharp contrast with those of wine. First of all, a cocktail is something artificial, a product of human creativity. Wines, however, are grown as well as made. As wine writers writers tell us, they arise out out of a subtle subtle negotiation negotiation between ourselves and nature. Hence, making wine is an art that requires lengthy experience and acquired judgement – whereas anyone anyone can make a decent Martini simply simply by following instructions. A further consequence of their artificiality is that cocktails are consistent. It is true that instructions for making particular cocktails may differ amongst authorities, but a given recipe will always produce the same outcome. In contrast, wines vary even when they come from the same place at different times. A wine depends on grapes being planted, grown and fermented – all complex and unpredictable processes. With With cocktails and wine, the contrast between the artificial and natural is seen in operation. Further, wine comes from somewhere; its nature is due to the soil and climate of a particular place. In contrast, a cocktail April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 29
Cocktails do not keep, let alone improve. Every minute waiting before drinking it is a delay that threatens to bring the drink to room temperature – a disastrous event. So a cocktail comes and goes quickly – a parable of human life that has as much in its favour as higher-flown metaphors involving wine. Why Philosophy And The Cocktail Belong Together
The artificiality artificiality of cocktails cocktails is also also reflected in in their cultural cultural location. They belong in cities, and modern ones at that. Wine philosophers, philosophers, by contrast, like to pose as sons of the soil, even if in practice they are seen outside city limits only on their occasional expeditions to wineries. But philosophy too belongs to city life. As Socrates says to Phaedrus, “The men who dwell in the city are my teachers, not the trees or the country” (Plato, Phaedrus ).). When philosophy became a university discipline, its civilized habitat was confirmed once and for all. Even Heidegger’s greatest admirers have no intention of moving to huts in the Black Forest. Like other philosophers, they settle in university towns or in big cities. Now by tradition, wine is associated with wisdom: “ in vino veritas ,” ,” the wine drinkers say. In contrast, cocktails are associated with wit and inventiveness – not the same thing at all, and yet found in some notable notable examples of of philosophical philosophical thinking. I’ve already mentioned Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, both of whom prove that wit and wisdom can exist together. together. Readers can add more up-to-date examples if they wish. Many will no doubt start with Slavoj Žižek, whose work is described by commentator Richard Kearney as “a postmodern cocktail of Lacan, Sade and Hegel” ( Strangers, Gods and Monsters , 2003, p.97). Kearney’s choice of metaphor may carry a hint of disapproval. The philosophical philosophical tradition tradition tends to be suspicious suspicious of thinking thinking or writing that risks the same accusations of superficiality and irresponsibility irresponsibility directed against the cocktail by wine-drinking critics. But philosophers who have learned to read Nietzsche attentively might be prepared to think again.
M O C . N N I F D N A N O M I S T I S I V E S A E L
P 6 1 0 2
R E D L E
F
A S S I L E
M © N O O T R A
C N N I
F +
N O M I
S
Clink, Drink & Think
comes from a bar not far from the drinker – in fact, very often it’s constructed in full sight of the consumer. Any association with another another part part of the world world is only only symbol symbolic. ic. A Mai Tai may may make you think of Hawaii, and it’s it’s just possible that it was invented there, but that’s as far as any connection goes. g oes. Only one cocktail is called a Cosmopolitan – a combination of vodka, lime and cranberry juice, popular because featured in Sex and the City – but in principle they could all carry that name. Just as cockta cocktails ils have have no relation relation to to place, place, so too too they they have have no intrinsic temporality. temporality. Wines are usually years old (apart from the wine made by Jesus Jesus at the the wedding wedding in Cana, Cana, and that that involv involved ed setting aside the laws of nature). Wine lovers are aware of time’s time’s work, work, and seek out preferr preferred ed vintages vintages of a given wine. In concontrast, a cocktail is typically made just before being consumed. 30 Philosophy Now Now ● April/May April/May 2016
Nothing I have said about wine and cocktails is meant to imply that they are in competition for philosophical allegiance. My aim aim is certainly certainly not to talk talk up up one at the the other’ other’s expense. expense. I will even conced concedee that that whereas whereas most wines are good, good, or at least drinkable, many cocktails are pretty awful. At least, the majority of recipes given in what are sold as cocktail guides look undrinkable to me. I suspect they have never actually been made, or only once, and are included to pad out the book’s length. Fads and fashions are also evident. Even so, here as elsewhere, e lsewhere, the classics have a staying power that outlasts transient challengers. Cannot we say much the same thing about works of philosophy? So I come to my conclusion: true philosophers will drink cocktails. No doubt they will go on to drink wine, and in a spirit of conciliation, I recommend the pinot noirs of Central Otago to readers wanting to broaden their experience. In terms of the contrasts I have listed, philosophy itself has a foothold on both sides. As I said, cocktails are to wine as wit is to wisdom. Why shouldn’t we have both, if we can? © ROBIN SMALL 2016
Robin Small isis an Honorary Honorary Professorial Fellow Fellow at the the University University of Melbourne, and Emeritus Professor Professor at the University University of Auckland.
Philosophy Then N O T F A R
G R E G N A L E
Meat is Murder
B L O R A
C Y B E G A M
Peter Adamson contemplates
non-violence in ancient Indian thought.
I
I
n my last column, I talked about the challenges and excitements of tackling ancient Indian philosophy in my Histo my History ry of Philosophy podcast – thankfully with the help of an expert, Jonardon Ganeri. We’ve already received some feedback about the series, young though it is. One of the most common queries is whether we can really talk about philos about philosophy ophy in ancient India, as opposed to religious belief systems. Is Buddhism a religious tradition, or a philosophical tradition? Are the Upanisads really philosophical texts? My response to these questions has been twofold: first, they’re slightly above my pay grade, and second, even if we think that these texts and traditions are religious, they certainly contain philosophical material. An interesting test case is the Indian concept of ahimsa, ahimsa, meaning ‘non-injury’ or ‘non-violence’. ‘non-violence’. Even Indologists do not agree as to whether this notion is fundamentally religious or ethical in character. It is invoked most famously, and perhaps obviously, to encourage abstinence from eating meat. But ahimsa is about more than vegetarianism. In the hands of its most most devoted practitioners, the Jains, ahimsa becomes a comprehensive way of life. The Jains want to avoid killing killing even minute organisms on the ground or in the air around them – they sometimes wear face masks to avoid inhaling tiny creatures, or observe a fast after nightfall lest they may ingest a stray insect in the dark. This is part and parcel of a radically ascetic lifestyle, adopted especially by Jain ‘renouncer’ monks in imitation of Mahavira, a contemporary contemporary of of the Buddha Buddha whom Jains revere as the last last in a line of great teachers (‘ford-makers’) who pointed the way to escape the cycle of rebirth. Not that the Jains have an intellectual copyright on ahimsa. ahimsa. Other texts and traditions also encourage a non-violent way of life. Famously, the Buddhists make this part of their compassionate approach, and Hindu texts also speak of the ethic of ahimsa – sometimes in a way that flirts with self-
contradiction: contradiction: the Laws the Laws of Manu (2nd C. BCE to 3rd C. CE) tell us not to harm any living thing since this bars the way to heaven, but also that killing an animal in a Vedic Vedic sacrifice sacrifice doesn’t doesn’t really count count as killing and is needed to maintain the balance of the cosmos. cosmos. This illustrates illustrates the difficulty: were these discussions of violence really ethical, or rather disagreements about religious practice? You You can argue the the point both ways. ways. On On the one hand, scholars have argued that ahimsa first emerged as a kind of ritual taboo, born out of the ‘embarrassment’ of engaging in rituals that required the slaying of an animal. Slowly rituals became more symbolic and less bloody, not to respect animal rights so much as to escape the prospect of karmic retribution. (There are stories about sacrificers being fed upon in the afterlife by the animals they had slain and eaten. That’s enough to put anyone off their food.) On the other hand, numerous ancient texts argue for ahimsa in a way that irresistibly calls to mind the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have others do unto you. A Jaina work says, “All living beings without exception desire to live, not to be killed. Therefore, those without without fetters fetters [i.e. [i.e. the Jaina Jaina monks] monks] avoid the dreadful act of killing” (from Har (from Haranan anan-dalahari , trans L. Schmithausen, 2000, p.273). And we can find similar passages in Buddhist texts and the Mahab the Mahabhar harata ata.. Perhaps then we should settle, as some scholars have, for the idea that ahimsa began as a religious taboo born out of fear of karmic retribution, but evolved into a genuinely ethical precept. It’s a story that flatters the philosopher: religious ideas being refined and purified until they count as philosophical ideas. But as so often in the history of philosophy, what looks familiar at first sight comes to seem more exotic on closer inspection. We’re used nowadays to philosophers arguing that we should be vegetarian and more generally promote animal welfare, welfare, often often from from a utilit utilitaria arian n point point of view. view. But But the the Jains Jains,, and and other other ancient ancient IndiIndi-
ans who designed their lives to avoid violence, were no utilitarians. They were not trying to maximize pleasure or utility for the greatest number of sentient beings. This is shown shown by several several facts facts.. For For one one thing, they didn’t only care about sentient beings, or at least those beings we would recognize as sentient. Jain dietary restrictions extend to some kinds of fruits and vegetable vegetables, s, which which are believed believed to contain contain numerous life forms within them. Plants aren’t people either, but you can still kill them: thus if meat is murder, so is salad. That’ That’s not not to say that all killing killing is seen seen as as on a par. It was recognized that the violence involved in killing a plant is less heinous than that involved in slaughtering an animal, to say nothing of a human. Still, what are you to do if you believe that even eating plants violates ahimsa, ahimsa, in however minimal a fashion? These renouncer traditions found a solution. Buddhist and Jain monks lived on alms – food donated to them by charitable laypersons – in part because it meant allowing them to eat without killing anything. (The Buddhists even have texts applying this strategy to meateating.) So long as the food was not actually prepared with the monk in mind, the monk could eat these ‘leftovers’ with a clean conscience. The renouncers were above all concerned with their own purity – with ensuring that they themselves were not directly implicated in violence. Jains Jains and Buddhists Buddhists have cercertainly encouraged others to follow the same non-violent path, and can thus be credited with trying to reduce the total amount of harm to living things. But this wasn’t wasn’t their primary primary goal. Rather, Rather, much like ancient Greek and Roman virtue theory, the ancient precept of ahimsa was ahimsa was above all about shaping the self. © PROF. PETER ADAMSON 2016
Peter Peter Adamson Adamson is the author of A of A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, Vols 1 & 2, available from OUP. Both are based on his popular History of Philosophy podcast. podcast. April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now
31
The Universe Is Made Of M Of M Tegmark. Sam Woolfe recounts the mathematical metaphysics of physicist Max Tegmark.
M
ax Tegmark is a Swedish-American cosmologist currently teaching at MIT. He has made important contributions contributions to physics, such as measuring dark matter and understanding how light from the early universe informs the Big Bang model of the universe’s origins. He has also proposed his own Theory of Everything. His Theory of Everything is known as the Ultimate Ensemble or by the more attention-grabbing attention-grabbing name, the Mathem the Mathematical atical Univer Universe se Hypothesis Hypothesis . This hypothesis hypothesis can be summed up in one phrase: phrase: “Our external physical reality is a mathematical structure.” structure.” In this case, a ‘mathematical structure’ structure’ means a set of abstract entities, such as numbers, and the mathematical relations between them. So the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis states that mathematics is not just a useful tool we have invented to describe the uni verse. Rather, Rather, mathematics itself defines itself defines and structures the uni verse. In other other words, the physical universe is mathematics. is mathematics. This is a very very strange and bold statement, statement, and at first first glance it’s not easy to wrap your head around it, but let’s try.
T R A S ’ N E K F O E R O M E E S O T
M O C . W A L D I A L N E K . W W W
T I S I V E S A E L
P 6 1 0 2 W A L D I A
L N E
K © S C I T A M E H T A
M F O D L R O
W
32 Philosophy Now Now ● April/May April/May 2016
Tegmark & Plato The Mathematical Universe Hypothesis Hypothesis has a very philosophical nature to it. It can be considered a form of Platonism, the philosophy of Plato, who argued that certain abstract ideas have a real independent existence beyond our minds. Similarily, Similarily, Tegmark’ Tegmark’ss hypothesis hypothesis argues that mathematical entities entities such as as numbers exist independently of us – these abstract entities are not merely imaginary; they exist as part of mind-independent reality. In a sense, Tegmark’s hypothesis goes well beyond Platonism, since Tegmark claims that ultimately only mathematical objects exist and nothing else does! In his own words, “there is only mathematics; that is all that exists” ( Discover magaDiscover magazine, July 2008). This position is known as mathematical monism. monism . Some may view Tegmark’s mathematical monism as an extreme and nonsensical position, position, due to the fact that we never perceive these mathematical objects, whereas we do perceive a physical world, full of physical objects. Based on our experience, it would seem that there is no evidence for the existence of mathematical objects, whereas there is unavoidable evidence
for a physical world. However, in his paper ‘The Mathematical oundations of Physics Physics (2007), Universe’ in F in Foundations (2007), Tegmark argues that, “in those [worlds] complex enough to contain self-aware substructures [they] will subjectively perceive themselves as existing in a physically ‘real’ world.” So we shouldn’t be surprised to find that we perceive a physical world, because because this perception is the inevitable result of a mathematical universe which is sufficiently complex. Ultimately, then, our perception of a physical world is due to the nature of our consciousness r, and not due to the true nature of the universe itself. In a way this is similar to Plato’s belief that ordinary minds cannot perceive or even understand the true nature of things. The true nature nature of things, Plato claims, can be traced to what he calls Forms or Ideas, which are abstract, timeless, archetypal, non-physical non-physical entities. In order to go beyond the illusory appearance of things, we need to use reason to uncover their true nature, not visual or other perception. This, he argued, only those trained in philosophy could do. Similarily, Tegmark argues that there are two possible ways to view reality; from inside the mathematical structure, and from outside it. We view it from within it, and so see a physical reality which exists in time. From the (purely hypothetical) external point of view, however, Tegmark thinks that there is only a mathematical structure which exists outside of time. Some might respond to this by saying that the idea of ‘outside of time’ and ‘timelessness’ is verging on the mystical. Mathematical Reasoning & Science Indeed, Tegmark admits that he is in a minority of scientists who believe his his Mathematical Universe Hypothesis. Hypothesis. It took a while before he got his ideas ideas published published in a scientific scientific journal, journal, and he was warned that his MUH would damage his reputation and career. But there are some reasons why one might believe it. The physicist Eugene Wigner wrote an essay called ‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences’ (Communications (Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics , vol. 13, No.1, No.1, 1960), asking asking why nature nature is so accurately accurately described by mathematics. Tegmark answers that the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in describing reality implies that mathematics is at the very foundation of reality. The ancient Greek Greek thinker Pythagoras Pythagoras and his followers also believed that the universe was built on or from mathematics; whilst Galileo said that nature is a “grand book” written in “the language of mathematics.” But it is also worth reminding ourselves that there are those who think mathematics is purely a human invention, albeit one which is extremely useful. For instance, in their book Where Mathematics Comes From (2001), George Lakoff and Rafael Nunez maintain that mathematics arises from our brains, our everyday experiences, and from the needs of human societies, and that mathematics is simply the result of normal human cognitive abilities, especially the capacity for conceptual metaphor – understanding one idea in terms of another. Mathematics is effective because it is the result of evolution, not because it has its basis in an objective reality: numbers or mathematical principles are not independent truths. (However, (However, these authors do praise the invention of mathematics as one of the greatest and most ingenious inventions ever made.) An extreme version of this evolutionary idea
is the mathematical fictionalism put forward by Hartry Field in Numbers (1980). Field said that mathhis book, Science Without Numbers (1980). anything real. Instead he ematics does not correspond to anything real. believes that mathematics is a kind of useful fiction: that statements such as ‘2+2=4’ are just as fictional as statements such as ‘Harry Potter lives at Hogwarts’. We know what they mean, but their assertions do not correspond to anything real. Tegmark In The Multiverse Interestingly, Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe Hypothesis also relates to the multiverse hypothesis, in that he maintains that all structures that exist mathematically also exist physically. This means that anything that can be described by mathematics actually exists. It follows, then, that there are other universes in which I don’t don’t exist, whereas there are an infinite number of me in still other universes. Tegmark Tegmark also writes writes in his paper ‘Parallel Universes’ in Science and Ultimate Reality (J.D. Barrow, Bar row, P.C.W P.C.W.. Davies, Davi es, & C.L. Harper, Harper, eds, 2003), that his Ultimate Ensemble/Mathematical Ensemble/Mathematical Universe Hypothesis encompasses encompasses all levels of multiverse, of which he says says that there are four types types or levels. The first type type of multiverse is a universe which is infinite in space in which there are regions which we cannot observe, but which may be similar (or even identical) to our observable region. For this type of multiverse, the physical constants and laws are the same everywhere. The second type is a multiverse multiverse in which which some regions regions of space form distinct non-interacting bubble universes, like gas pockets in a loaf of rising bread. Different bubbles may have different fundamental physical constants, such as the strength of gravity, the weight of an electron, and so on. The third type type or level of multiverse, is one in which all possible courses of action actually take place in separate or parallel universes. If, for example, I decide to take the bus to work instead of the train, reality will split at the point of my decision such that there will be another universe, which is just as real, where I take the train to work and not not the bus. This idea was was originally Hugh Everett’s many-worlds interpretation interpretation of quantum mechanics, and it is quite mainstream in the physics community. The Level III multiverse can be thought of as a tree with an infinite infinite number of of branches, where every possible possible quantum event creates a new universe and so signifies the growth of a new branch. Tegmark Tegmark writes, "The only difference difference between Level I and Level III is where your doppelgängers reside.” In a Level I concept of the multiverse, my doppelgängers (copies) (copies) live exist somewhere else in the same universe as me; whereas in Level III they exist in a different universe altogether. The Level IV type type of multiverse multiverse is the Ultimate Ultimate Ensemble, and it contains all the other levels of multiverse, or describes all the other levels. This is why the Ultimate Ensemble is considered a Theory of Everything – because it can supposedly explain every single universe that possibly exists. To Tegmark, every different universe is ultimately a different mathematical structure. © SAM WOOLFE 2016
Sam Woolfe is a Philosophy graduate from Durham University who currently lives in London and blogs at www at www.samwoolfe. .samwoolfe.com com.. April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 33
Socrates & Zen Geoff Sheehan uses Buddhist parables to illustrate Socratic philosophy.
M
any share a common picture of Socrates: a goggleeyed, pot-bellied, barely clothed man, asking all and sundry difficult, and irritating, questions about virtue, a fixture in the public places, shops and gymnasia in and around the central market place of fifth century BCE Athens. Athens. What was he on on about? about? One answer answer to this question, question, ‘searchin ‘searching g for for definitions’, seems seems on the face of it utterly inadequate: Socrates was tried and execu executed ted because because he was was search searching ing for defini definitions tions!! Yet Yet definitions definitions are important. For Socrates, Socrates, only if we make clear and distinct definitions which can illuminate all situations under discussion can we be said to know what a particular particular moral value is. So we can know what bravery is only if we can discern what the many acts we call ‘brave’ have in common, from the bravery of the soldier in pitched battle, to the bravery of the worker who stands up to bullying in the workplace, to the bravery of the depressive who crawls out of bed every morning despite every fibre of their being urging them to stay put. But simply to arrive at a common definition – even assuming that this is possible – seems to me to fall short. Socrates is after more than the knowledge enshrined in definitions; or passionate knowledge. rather, the knowledge he is after must be passionate It was this passionate search that led to Socrates’ death at the hands of a justly-admired democratic state. His search for the meaning of values like courage, justice and piety, values which Socrates himself demonstrated, and his attempt to make his explanations of those values clear and compelling to those with whom he converse conversed, d, made made him him deeply deeply unpopula unpopular. r. He was was seen seen as undermining the very values which Athenians regarded as being hallmarks of their society – even if they could not articulate them. them. “Of course course everyone knows what bravery is, Socrates! Why do you you need need to to confuse confuse everyone everyone by search searching ing for a definidefinition of it?” The Search For Wisdom At the risk of turning Socrates into into a closet closet Buddhist, Buddhist, there are some instructive parallels with that religion, particularly Distant view of Mount Fuji by Fuji by Keisai Eisen, 1835
34 Philosophy Now Now ● April/May April/May 2016
with some some of the Zen koans or parables, parables, which may may help us to understand Socrates’ search for knowledge more clearly. A key element element in Socrates’ search for for certainty involves preparing the ground: only by getting rid of the dead wood of opinion, prejudice or misguided beliefs can the student make progress on the path to knowledge. The Zen story ‘A cup of tea’ illustrates this nicely: Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor professor watched the overflow until he no longer could could restrain himself: “It is overfull. No more will go in!” “Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
Although many many of those those whom Socrates challenges challenges get no further than recognising their preconceptions, Socrates would see this as a boon, for now the ground is prepared for the journey to continue. Perhaps Euthyphro, a religious ‘expert’ who has taken his own father to court on a charge of impiety, does not get even as far as this: by the end of the dialogue named after him he is repeating himself and seems incapable of seeing the implications of Socrates’ questions. His mind has been numbed in the manner noted by the playboy-general Alcibiades, who compares Socrates’ questions to the numbing effect of a stingray’s Meno, 80a). Most of those to whom Socrates talks end barbs ( Meno up feeling numb and at a loss, unsure how to continue. This state has been termed ‘ aporia’ (‘impasse’) and Socrates sees reaching it as a vital part of his method. His skill as a framer of questions now comes to the fore, as he guides his interlocutor on to the next stage, towards knowledge – a stage which generally has very limited success! A famous Zen parable parable which illustrates illustrates the the importance importance of the search is ‘The sound of one hand clapping’. Twelve-yearold Toyo seeks enlightenment from Mokurai, the head monk at his local temple. Finally Mokurai agrees, and sees Toyo in the monk’s instruction room. Assuming that Toyo knows what sound two hands clapped together makes, he asks him: ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ The boy retires to his room to consider. Over a long period of time (it is not clear how long), Toyo offers a variety of sounds to Mokurai, including the music of geishas, the dripping of water, the sighing of the wind, and the hooting of an owl. None of these, of course, is the answer. It is not until he meditates fully, and in doing so transcends all sounds, that he reaches the ‘soundless sound’ – the sound of one hand clapping. Toyo Toyo achieves achieves enlightenm enlightenment. ent. Socrates Socrates is seekin seeking g knowledge; or perhaps it is better to say that he is seek-
BUDDHIST SOCRATES © STEVE LILLIE 2016 PLEASE
VISIT WWW .STEVELILLIE .BIZ
ing wisdom, in that the values in question are not just an intellectual matter, but are values to be lived. In Socrates’ eyes, a man who claims claims to know what bravery bravery is but but does does not not act bravely bravely would would thereby thereby prove prove that that he does not know know what what brave bravery ry is. is. The World & Its Temptations One of the ideas Socrates offers in the Apology would have have
been greeted by astonishment by the jurors and spectators at his trial: “I do not believe,” he says, “that the law of God permits a better man to be harmed by a worse” (31c). Socrates was no doubt making a barbed comment against his accusers here; but we can also understand this remark in a deeper way. The Zen story ‘Is that so?’ can help: The Zen Zen master master Hakuin Hakuin was praise praised d by his neighbours neighbours as one one living living a pure life. A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. Suddenly, Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child. This made her parents angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after after much harassmen harassmentt at last last named named Hakuin. Hakuin. In great anger the parents went to the master. “Is that so?” was all he would say. say. After the child child was born born it was brought brought to Hakuin. By By this time he he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him; but he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbours, and everything else the little one needed. A year later the the girl-mother girl-mother could stand itit no longer longer.. She told told her parents the truth – that the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fish market. The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask his forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back. Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said was: “Is that so?”
Hakuin is secure in his self-knowledge. What other people think of him is of no consequence. Similarily, Socrates knows that he is innocent of the charges against him, and he certainly doesn’t care how he is regarded by others. Socrates was also not interested in worldly possessions or money. However, he lived life to the full: he enjoyed bodily pleasures, including drink – his capacity for alcohol was the stuff of legend. So it is a little surprising to find in the Phaedo [65 abc] that he gives the body a hard time. Its chief defect is that impedes the path to knowledge: our senses let us down, we suffer from pain, we get distracted by sex and other bodily pleasures, and by clothes and ornaments. in short, the body gets in the way of our reflecting on the things that matter – the wisdom Socrates is searching for – by tying us to its demands. Therefore Therefore it is the task of philosophers to distance themselves from their bodies. A Zen story helps us to see how this might be achieved: Tanzan Tanzan and Ekido, Ekido, two monks, were were once traveling traveling together together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was falling. Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono, unable to cross the flooded intersection. “Come on girl!” said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud. Ekido did not speak again until that night, when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself: “We monks don’t go near females,” he told Tanzan, “Especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous! Why did you do that?” “I left the girl there,” said Tanzan. “Are you still carrying her?” 36 Philosophy Now Now ● April/May April/May 2016
Tanzan Tanzan boldly boldly carries the the young woman over over the mud, mud, but his kind action does not lead to the sort of impure feelings which have presumably presumably dogged dogged Ekido since since the encounter encounter.. Tanzan Tanzan is able able to put the encounter encounter into perspectiv perspective, e, and is grounded enough in his Buddhism for any sexual feelings he may have had to be of no consequence for him. Socrates obviously enjoys the pleasures of this world, but he too can put them into perspective. When necessary, Socrates is able to escape the body’s demands. In the Symposium (‘symposium’ means ‘drinking party’) Alcibiades delights in telling his fellow guests how Socrates behaved during the siege of Potidea during the Peloponnesian War. Not only did he ignore the bitter cold during the winter months of the campaign, in the summer he stood on the same spot for a day and a night – lost, one might say, in Zen-like contemplation. Living Knowledge
What then of the the sort sort of knowledge knowledge or wisdom wisdom that Socrates Socrates is seeking? Perhaps we can approach this through one of Socrates’ most puzzling statements: “No one does wrong willingly” (Gorgias , 509e). For Socrates, if one knows the correct course of action, one undertakes it. The corollary is that if one doesn’t doesn’t follow the correct course, then one simply did not know it (and therefore cannot be punished!). Knowledge then is far beyond a question of definitions. We might say that wisdom is a matter of life or death. A Zen-like parable told by Mark Vernon may help in this regard: One day a dispassionate young man approached the philosopher and casually said, “O great Socrates, I come to you for knowledge!” The philosopher philosopher took the young man man down to the sea, waded waded in with him, and then dunked him under the water for thirty seconds. When he let the young man up for air, air, Socrates Socrates asked asked him to repeat what he he wanted. “Knowledge, O great one!” he sputtered. Socrates put him under the water again, only this time a little longer. After repeated repeated dunkings dunkings and responses, responses, the the philosopher philosopher asked, “What do you want?” The young man man finally gasped, gasped, “Air. “Air. I want air!” air!” “Good,” answered Socrates. “Now, when you want knowledge as much as you wanted air, you shall have it.” (from Wellbeing by Mark Vernon, 2008)
The response response Socrates Socrates wants from those those he questions questions is not simply a definition: that definition must be grounded in a passion for understanding the value to be defined, to the extent that a failure to live the value would be instant proof that it was in fact not known. To put the matter another way – only if we are as full of knowledge of our values as the young man wants to be full of air, can we be said to know their meaning. We We are no further along along the road road to the sort sort of moral moral knowledge which Socrates is searching for; but perhaps the koans here may make the path a little easier to travel. © GEOFF SHEEHAN 2016
Geoff Sheehan studied philosophy at the University of Auckland, Auckland, and is an enthusiast of fifth-century BCE Athens, particularly its troublemaking philosopher Socrates. • The Zen stories stories are taken taken from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones , Bones , compiled by Paul Reps at terebess.hu/zen/101ZenStones.pdf
Question of the Month
???
What’s What’ s Your Your Best Advice or Wisdom? The following responses to this sagacious question each win a random book.
I
magine if Alice hadn’t followed the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole. She would then not have drunk the potion (or was it ate the forbidden forbidden fruit?) and and met the March March Hare and the Mad Hatter. My best piece of wisdom is therefore for us not to lose our sense of wonder about the world around us . us . If not for our inquisitiveness, inquisitiveness, we would still be living with the Flintstones. Evolution did not have in mind a Buddha or a Beethoven; we nevertheless went on to discover fire, invent the wheel, and to write Hamlet. An inquiring mind mind led us also to relativity relativity,, quantum physics and all the natural laws. If we had not uncovered them, we would still be conflating acts of nature with acts of God. All animals may be curious curious in their own way. way. However, However, their curiosity is chained to their survival needs. Humanity may be the only species that exhibits curiosity for curiosity’s sake. Our zest for inquiry may therefore be unique, in a way – another reason why we should cherish it. Moreover, just as language “makes infinite use of finite means,” as Wilhelm von Humboldt found, we can derive unbounded use from our sense of wonder too. Considering that we may be the most intelligent beings on the planet, we have a moral imperative to use that intelligence to better the world. Such an action would give us also immense satisfaction satisfaction and pride. As Francis Bacon exhorted, “all knowledge and wonder… is an impression of pleasure itself.” Curiosity of course occasionally kills the cat. Hence the need for it to be tempered with common sense. Nevertheless, it is preferable to dare to explore Icarus-like rather than die ignorant. As astrop astrophysic hysicist ist Subrah Subrahmanya manyan n Chandra Chandrasekha sekharr said said in a tribute tribute to the great scientist Arthur Eddington’s Eddington’s spirit of discovery, discovery, “let us see how high we can fly before the sun melts the wax in our wings.” wings.” And And when when we pass on, we leave leave behind behind – somewhat somewhat like the Cheshire Cat’s Cat’s surreal grin – the fruits of our wonder. wonder. V ENKAT ENKAT R AMANAN P ARKINSON, A USTRALIA USTRALIA
C
onstantly be mindful of your own fallibility . It is generally easy to be aware of the many imperfections possessed possessed by others, but (for some of us at any rate) knowing your own limitations is a little more difficult. Charles Darwin summed up one of the key problems here (and anticipated the concept of confirmation bias) when he wrote that when he came across a published fact, observation or thought that was opposed to his general results, he would “make a memorandum of it without fail and at once” for he had found that “such facts and thoughts were far more more apt to escape escape from the memory than favourable ones.” The roots of of error are many. many. A partial list includes includes the inherent and usually unconscious biases to which we are all subject, as well as ignorance, inexperience, the irreducible complexity of many real-life situations, tiredness, stress, illness, stubbornness, and ego. Recognising that these influences are universal and Advice/Wisdom Advice/Wisdom
inescapable engenders a certain humility. Why should should it it matter matter?? In In daily daily life the conseque consequences nces of being being overly certain may be no more than to cause annoyance to friends, relatives and colleagues. However, you don’t have to look far in the world to see the tragic consequences of too much certainty. Few atrocities are committed by those prepared to admit at least the possibility of another’s point of view having merit. Moreover Moreover,, in order order to learn, learn, it it is necessar necessaryy to admit admit ignora ignorance. nce. Scientific progress depends on a tacit admission that the current state of knowledge is provisional and incomplete – underlining Karl Popper’s view that real scientific theories are falsifiable. An admiss admission ion of of fallibil fallibility ity need not imply imply paralysis paralysis when making decisions, but allows for more considered thought, and the possibility of avoiding a damaging course of action if an error becomes clear. As John Maynard Keynes said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Bearing this in mind may help us to realise that when others disagree with us, they are not not necessar necessarily ily fundam fundamental entally ly misguid misguided. ed. They They may even be right. Although I can’t be sure about that, of course. D AVID AVID BOURN W HICKHAM HICKHAM, NEWCASTLE EWCASTLE UPON T YNE
T
here are different forms of wisdom. First there is the kind that is directed towards enhancing the inner life of the individual, as propounded by teachers such as the Buddha. It generally counsels self-control and detachment from everyday pressures. The other kind of wisdom I would call worldly wisdom, and it concerns itself with handling other people in order to achieve safety and perhaps social promotion. Typically, this wisdom counsels counsels wariness wariness – ‘Neither a lender or a borrower be’ – and the need to dissemble. So the Sixteenth Century courtier and author Castiglione tells us to work hard but not let others see that we are doing so. Or the Jesuit philosopher Gracian says, “know how to be all things to all people.” There tends to be a cynical side to worldly wisdom which wants to exploit human foibles to one’s advantage: “Find everyone’s weak spot” (Gracian again). again). There is even a dark side side to it. So the Florentine diplomat Machiavelli says it is better for a ruler for him to be feared rather than loved. These two forms forms of wisdom wisdom are not incompatible. I think Dale Carnegie advocates both in his book How book How to win Friends Friends and Influence People. People . He believes that happiness depends on ‘inner conditions’ not outward conditions, but also advocates a concern for others and a sincere interest in their affairs in order to win their friendship. But there is a cynical side here too: “Talk to somebody about themselves and they will listen for hours,” he says. To him you must be sincere and honest, but an insight into the nature of people can be used for personal gain. But students of Dale Carnegie, beware of looking too good or talking too wise. Lofty and eloquent statements April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now
37
??
can be undermined by parody or irony. So wisdom needs to protect itself by casting itself in the mould of wit, using incongruity and paradox as commonly understood. Besides, jokey epithets stick in the mind. So if I were to dispense unsolicited wisdom, I would try to protect myself with this paradox. paradox. In this spirit I offer the following pearl: Don’t listen too much to the big things people say – observe the little things people do. do . That way you will understand understand them better. better. For instance, the news item showing Al Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, wearing a ten thousand pound wrist watch, should make us think just as much as what he says, if not more. OULD CHRIS G OULD NORWICH
U
sing the definition of advice as ‘an opinion offered as a recommendation recommendation worthy to be followed’, it becomes necessary to decide what would make an opinion meet that criterion. Noting that the question also asks for my wisdom, and putting those two ideas together, it seems to me that what I am being asked for is wise advice. rie Dictio Dictionary nary defines wisdom as having ‘knowl The Macqua The Macquarie edge of what is true or right, coupled with just judgement as to action, sagacity, sagacity, prudence, or common sense’. In the ancient world, world, wisdom wisdom was also thought thought of as the the type type of knowledge knowledge that people needed to discern the good, and live a good life. If wisdom, and therefore wise advice, is knowledge about living a good life, the answer I give needs to be underpinned by knowledge of just that sort. Therefore wise advice would be based on the truth; that is it would be accurate, and would recommend actions that are discriminating and prudent. However, what constitutes a good life for me may not be right for someone else. Giving, and getting, wise advice is thus fraught with difficulty. difficulty. Personally, Personally, I have always found it more useful to ask advice from those who have demonstrated that they have knowledge of the area about which I am seeking an answer. answer. For example, if I want to know know anythi anything ng about about my mobile mobile phone, phone, I ask my gen Y children, not my elderly mother. So this is probably my best advice: Look advice: Look for wisdom wisdom from someon someonee who who has demonstr demonstrated ated that they have the sort of knowledge about living well that you seek – someone whose whose life life reflects reflects that knowledge, knowledge, or who who has the educati education on and and training that would give them that knowledge. LORIN JOSEPHSON S YDNEY
L
ike Polonius to Laertes in Hamlet in Hamlet , my best advice would true , for the same reason he gives: be To thine own self be true, “Thou canst not then be false to any man.” But what does it actually mean? It’s certainly up for interpretation, but this is what I think think it implies. In human affairs, it is often best to express yourself fully and avoid dishonesty, especially when revealing to others your thoughts, opinions and natural inclinations. For example, in a job interview, interview, it is wise wise to recognise recognise that you should should answer answer questions truthfully and not hide important details about yourself, because the truth will eventually out. But this is not the entire picture. Saying you should be true to your own sense of self-identity also implies that you should adhere to your deepest ambitions and desires, seeking to achieve them and not be 38
Now ● April/May Philosophy Now April/May 2016
dissuaded from them; for, arguably, if you don’t, they were never your true ambitions and desires. It also suggests you should aim to craft an identity you find fitting, for the achievement of the goals you set yourself – therefore acting as a catalyst for self-improvement. Conversely, what if you are naturally horrible and/or selfish – an instinctively unpleasant person? By acting openly horribly and selfishly, people will know how unpleasant you are. However, you have not acted duplicitously – you have been true to yourself – and arguably, arguably, have acted in a wise and – of sorts – honourable manner. People will respond accordingly, and probably shun you. But again, again, such an outcome outcome may act act as a catalyst catalyst for change, change, as you observe the undesirable effect of your own disagreeable character and behaviour upon others’ behaviour towards you. Consequently, it seems that being true to your own self is, indeed, good advice, and Polonius appears, in this instance at least, to be offering sage guidance. JONATHAN TIPTON PRESTON, L ANCASHIRE
A
s far as received wisdom, I would quote either Russell or Whitehead (I’m (I’m not sure which): “Humble “Humble yourself yourself or the world will do it for you.” As concerns the creative act, the the best advice I ever received was from a famous cook – that the main ingredient (excuse the pun) of a good cook is a good taster. To this I would add that, more than we are what we eat, we are what we take in. As far as crisis situations, the best advice advice I ever heard was the survivor’s words from a documentary on people stranded in snowstorms: don’t waste energy on assigning blame, accept that you have a situation, and that if you just trudge on, one way or the other, it will pass. From this I would say that faced with adversity or anxiety, sometimes the only way out is through. And have confidence in the face of uncertainty, courage in the face of the absurd. On the other hand, gun to head, I would suggest that although we believe in things like afterlives, higher powers, and higher principles, our point A to point B is pretty much a given. And what what better better could we do do with with what what we have been been given, given, than see what consciousness can experience, and our minds can do? But there is no gun, and I refuse to be taken seriously. So if I had to crown any advice, it would be the three assumptions by which I work, work, which also also underlie all all the offerings offerings above: takes its natural natural course. course. Even when we intervene, it 1. Everything 1. Everything takes merely becomes part of that course. be questioned – questioned – including, and most impor2. Everything 2. Everything must be tantly, ourselves. broken.. 3. Assumptions 3. Assumptions are made to be broken D.E. T ARKINGTON BELLEVUE, NEBRASKA
M
y first first advice advice is not not to give give unsolicited unsolicited advice. People find find it annoying and take no notice anyway. My second advice is to accept the ideas that you are alive (not in a vat) and that you have have the freedom (your life is not predetermi predetermined) ned) to give out there there and give give meaning to your life. My final advice is to get out your life life meaning meaning . But… but… you you say – what about about my obligations to x, y or z? Careful rational analysis of these buts and obligations will reveal that you really could just get the next bus Advice/Wisdom Advice/Wisdom
out of town and exercise that freedom. On the other hand, failure to exercise your freedom will mean a life unfulfilled and a deathbed regret. You will not get a second chance at life, and your life’s meaning meaning is somethin something g that comes only only from from you. you. G ORDON ORDON CONROY PENNANT HILLS, NEW SOUTH W ALES
T
he best advice is the positive Golden Rule, ‘ Do unto others as you would would have them do unto unto you’. you’. This entails the negative you’. rule, ‘Do ‘Do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you’. The positi positive ve rule rule encoura encourages ges us us to do good; good; the negativ negative, e, to do no harm. What more could you ask for? The Golden Rule has its limitations, but who ever said it was the only advice? It has its critics, but what general moral maxim doesn’t? It may also be said that this advice is trite, but that only illustrates its value. The most important question is the ethical question, ‘What should I do?’, and the Golden Rule well answers it. The best advice should be practical, not theoretical. act on, not just think It should be something that one can act on, about. It should be something that improves both the person and society. The Golden Rule does all that. The best advice advice also addresses addresses the young young and provides provides good enculturation. Young children have basic needs and want immediate satisfaction. satisfaction. They are selfish and need to be socialized. They need to ‘get out of themselves’ and learn that there are others. The Golden Rule enables that process. The young also need something easy like the Golden Rule that provides fundamental moral insight but teaches them empathy, compassion, and fairness. The Golden Rule Rule rests on the idea that others are fundafundamentally like oneself, and that this provides a basis for fruitful relationships with them. It assumes a common human nature, and that by and large what hurts me hurts you and what benefits me benefits you. It provides the basis for fundamental human equality. We are all equal in fundamental aspects, and what is fair fair for me is fair for you. you. With With developing maturity maturity we also realize the importance of individual differences within this context of equality. Because I do not like to be embarrassed, I should not embarrass you; but in time I learn that what embarrasses you is different from what embarrasses me. The process of maturation is that of building good character, character, which is essential to civilization. So the best advice to anyone, but espetice the Golden Golden Rule. Rule. cially the young, is prac is practice JOHN T ALLEY R UTHERFORDTON UTHERFORDTON, NORTH C AROLINA
I
f we want to share some good advice with the world, we need to find something that not only are we deeply con vinced of, but which can can be useful for people from from all walks walks of life and with different skills and cultural backgrounds. backgrounds. With With that that in mind, my advice advice is, write down something about your day, every day. day. It can be done by pretty much anyone – you don’t don’t need expensive equipment, pencil and paper will suffice. But it’s it’s useful because it will help you have a clearer picture of where your life is going, going, and will prevent prevent you from wallowing wallowing in self-pity in the incorrect assumption that things have never been so bad before. It will allow you to look at what you were years ago, and realise how much you have changed and grown up. It Advice/Wisdom Advice/Wisdom
??
will give you you the the chance chance to preserve preserve your your bright ideas and not not let let them dissolve into thin air. Not to mention the fact that it will nurture your ability to express your ideas in writing. In our world, where the present is all too ephemeral and the future doesn’t exist yet, our identity is based largely on our memory of the past. But our memory can be inaccurate, incomplete, and affected by our mood and mental state. Only a daily record will allow you to maintain a global perspective on your past and, ultimately ultimately,, on your own personality personality.. ENRICO SORRENTIN O XFORD
T
he following are offered as pieces of good advice for budding philosophers. The more experienced lot should have figured it out by now: Get a nail clipper . You will need it to avoid biting your nails off your fingers when dreading that you are are the only mind mind in an external world that may not exist. Cultivate your transparent gaze. gaze. People will expect it when trying to understand if you mean the bizarre things you say: “What do you do you mean I mean I do not exist?” Have a toothbrush toothbrush handy. handy. Too much candy will serve your brain well when pondering pondering the origins origins of knowledge, knowledge, but it will eventually ruin your smile. Open the windows . You will need some fresh air when thinking whether the set of all those those sets that do not contain contain themselves contains itself. What did you say, Bertrand? Buy yourself a comfortable armchair . You will need it to doze away the afternoon thinking about beauty by imagining some beauties. Good head-support is required, and a place away from open windows. No need for fresh air here. Beauty should not be a paradox, and you do not want to catch a cold. Use as many of Ariadne’s threads as you can. can. Else you’ll lose your way in those those classics of of philosophy philosophy.. Nowadays Nowadays we call them them bookmarks. Keep strong ! I mean, keep some strong coffee available at arm’s length from your armchair. Your attention span will evaporate in a few pages and you need to recharge your circuits. Have a nice pair of walking walking shoes always always available available. When solutions refuse to show up at your armchair, it’s time to hit the road. Aristotle did it. They called it the Peripatetic Peripatetic School of Philosophy. You can wear sandals instead of shoes if you want. Finally, two things you won’t need: Get rid of your wristwatch. wristwatch. Philosophy is timeless and thus there is no need for a timetable. Listen to Ludwig, and always greet yourself with with a “Take “Take your time.” time.” Get rid of your clothes . That’s what Diogenes the Cynic liked to do. It freed up his mind. He went public, you should go private. You You have have been warned! warned! DR NIKOS ELEFTHERIADIS THESSALONIKI The next question is: Is Morality Objective? Please both give and justify your answer in less than 400 words. The prize is a semi-random book from our book mountain. Subject lines should be marked ‘Question of the Month’, and must be received by 13th June 2016. If you want a chance of getting a book, please include your physical address. Thanks.
April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 39
Letters When inspiration strikes, don’t bottle it up! Now w Write to me at: Philosophy No 43a Jerningham Road • London • SE14 5NQ • U.K. or email rick.lewis@philosophynow
[email protected] .org Keep them short and keep them coming! Tastes of Freedom
DEAR EDITOR : In the Editorial in Issue 112, you say that “It is entirely consistent to say that we do choose, [even if] God knows what we’re going to choose” (and presumably if we were to have chosen differently, He would have known that too). You say that this question is ‘utterly different’ from the scientific question of free will. I’m not so sure. Substitute ‘Laws of Nature’ for ‘God’: “It is entirely consistent to say that we do choose, but the Laws of Nature can explain what we choose.” But are we free if the Laws of Nature can explain everything we do? Note that I have used the word ‘explain’ rather than ‘determine’. I suspect that quantum indeterminacy allows explanations of our choices consistent with scientific scientific laws. I’m I’m suggesting that in our brains quantum effects may not be entirely random. I mean, although random results, choice observation yields random may produce non-random quantum effects that, taken together, explain the brain state correlated with a choice. Perhaps this is what you had in mind when you stated “I personally personally think that the power of will operates through our choices being indirect observations of our brain states in a quantum manner.” I AN L ANG , LONDON
the generally-accepted interpretation of quantum mechanics is related to an absence of similar considerations considerations that would undermine undermine free will. Conway claims that the exercise of free will by an experimenter is a necessary condition for the success of experiments showing particle indeterminacy. His work is described in Siobhan Roberts’ entertaining book Genius at Play (2015). Conway makes no claim to have proved that we have free will, and his result deals only with a vastly simplified situation, and, if accepted, would be no more than a straw in the wind. But, for those hoping for reasons to believe in free will, it shows that the wind could be blowing in the right direction. Any link between quantum indeterminacy and free will is, at the the least least,, of very great interest. interest. Niels Bohr, the father of quantum theory, kept a horseshoe hanging over the front door of his house in the country. A visiting scientist taunted him for this overt endorsement of superstition. superstition. Bohr retorted that it worked whether you believed in it or not. not. The concept of free will is a horseshoe hanging over the door of the philosophical philosophical academy. Long may it remain there. LISTAIR M M ACF ARLANE A LISTAIR B ARMOUTH, NORTH W ALES
DEAR EDITOR : Whether or not we have free will is the most important question in philosophy. If we do, then philosophers can continue to devise meaningful new philosophies. If we don’t, then their only useful role can be to explain why we can’t. So So it is hard hard to think of of any question of greater consequence. Thus it was very welcome welcome to see the the last theme of Philosophy Now devoted to this topic. Readers may be interested in some recent, and controversial, work on this topic by the well-known mathematician (and prankster) John Conway. He has argued – and supplied supplied mathematical mathematical proof based on a simple set of axioms – that the absence of ‘hidden variables’ in
DEAR EDITOR : In response to PN’s five essays on Free Will (Issue 112), I would like to highlight some key points that appear to have been overlooked. To wit, your mind/br mind/brain ain cannot cannot be manipulating manipulating you the the whole time if (as seems seems to be the case) you ‘are’ your mind/brain; human beings are not robots made of meat, slavishly following their programming; the suggestion that both determinism and indeterminism can disprove free will is a ‘Heads I win and tails you lose’ argument; and the self cannot be tricked into falling for the "illusion" of free will if (as alleged) the self does not exist. Denial of free will makes even less sense if we reflect that it can be lost (drugs, alcohol),
40
Philosophy Now ● April/May April/May 2016
taken (hypnotism) and even abdicated (turning all decisions over to coin flips). We may also wish wish to compare compare dreams in which we have no free will (most (most of of them) with lucid dreams in which we take control. And whilst we cannot wind back time to see if we could have chosen differently, we do all have that experience in the moment of decision and so have no more reason to dismiss this as an ‘illusion’ than we would have to dismiss all conscious thoughts and experiences as illusory. EITH G ILMOUR ILMOUR K EITH LASGOW G LASGOW DEAR EDITOR : I’m grateful to Steve Taylor for his ‘Reclaiming Freedom’ in Issue 112. He reminds us of various explanations offered over recent decades to account for the nature of our being, from behaviourist through to Freudian, existentialist, and humanistic psychology, then on to sociology and linguistic theory, gene theory and neuroscience. Some of these explanations can be seen to support the idea of our autonomy and some to undermine it, if not reject its existence altogether. It is especially with the latter that Taylor is concerned. I would like to add that such explanations themselves deeply affect the way we think about ourselves, especially if they become persuasive, for then we may become too confident in them and conclude that that’s how we must be. Our growing sophistication in research methods and their related tools, for instance increasingly high resolution digital imaging, can carry with it a spurious verisimilitude that makes us think that we are looking directly at reality as it really is, or ourselves as we really are. Instead, we are looking at representations of reality, with their attendant mechanistic emphases. It may be tempting to think that the most recent explanations (currently gene theory and neuroscience) have it right and this is how it is; but over the decades the pattern seems to be that as soon as we think we have the
Letters ‘right’ explanation, another more persuasive one follows. It needs emphasizing: all explanations of reality. If we conare but explanations of flate the map with the territory, we muddle ourselves and impose unwarranted limitations upon our autonomy and freedom. As neuroscientist Gerald Edelman pointed out in Bright Air, Brilliant Fire (1992), “the conscious life [that science] science] describes will always remain richer than its description” (p.209). COLIN BROOKES, LEICESTERSHIRE DEAR EDITOR : Ching-Hung Woo’s article ‘Free Will is an Illusion but Freedom Isn’t’ and Natasha Gilbert’s ‘The New Argument Argument about about Freedom’ Freedom’ in Issue Issue 112 both show the impossibility of finding the reality of our freedom in the deterministic laws of physics. Our will is indeed determined, but not by abstract physical laws – by our desire to enjoy a good life and death, and freedom lies in our ability to choose actions most likely to achieve this goal. The delusion is thinking that the soulless abstractions of physics are more real than the passionate wilful beings who created them. Physics is a powerful tool. It is, however, a purely theoretical system derived from abstractions based on obser vations. vations. This process process of of abstrac abstraction tion means the wilful passions of its creators are removed. Thus physics has nothing to say on the issue of its creators’ freedoms or the moral consequences of their actions. I think this simple conclusion provides another example of physicalism’s total failure to explain the reality of our being. S TEVE BREWER S T I VES, CORNWALL DEAR EDITOR : I have to say that I was underwhelmed by your free will issue. Five articles on the subject, three of them arguing that the free will we seem so obviously to have is all or mostly illusion. Singleton’s article is good on akra sia, sia, but says little about its bearing on free will. One paper (Taylor), correctly noting that human achievement and personal fulfilment are dependent on the genuineness of libertarian free will is written by a psychologist! psychologist! Lack of coercion coercion (Woo) is not enough enough to establish responsibility (speaking metaphysically and not legally). ‘Coercion’ means nothing if it doesn’t restrict some pre-existing freedo pre-existing freedom m. If my un-coerced choice was determined at the Big Bang then I cannot be responsible for it now
prior -coercion! anyway! Determinism is is prior -coercion! Gilbert relies much on Galen Strawson, but Strawson was just plain wrong: libertarian freedom does not require that every influence on a choice (Gilbert’s values, principles, principles, and reasons) was was freely elected by the subject in the past. Only a single aspect of the choosing need be open (in the present) for a choice to be freely willed. Raymond Tallis gets in on the act as well, though he points points out, out, correctly, correctly, that all of the proposed solutions are problematic. The fundamental problem is that if physics is causally closed and all there is is physics, then free will is impossible (and for that matter so is consciousness). That flatly contradicts our experience, but no amount of fiddling will restore genuine metaphysical responsibility. If on the other hand free will is genuine, then either physics is not causally closed as we believe it to be, or there is something else in the universe capable of adding freedom, being an uncaused cause in the physical that isn’t itself physical! Philosophers cannot have it both ways. M ATTHEW R APAPORT, C ALIFORNIA DEAR EDITOR : I much appreciated the seasonal reference in Professor Kamber’s article on Ebenezer Scrooge and his dire destiny in the absence of changing it in PN 111. PN 111. I was however left uncertain as to how Scrooge may avoid his doom. On the one hand, Professor Professor Kamber Kamber says – as did Gilbert Gilbert Ryle many years years ago – that choices made in a truly random way are not an attractive proposition: we would think that they were the product of madness. He also rightly says that determinism implies we have no meaningful way of saying that we could have decided otherwise. In an attempt to get around this, Kamber points to the fact that we cannot actually prove that our actions are completely determined. But we are still missing the necessary third way, of describing how our decisions can meaningfully be described as free. Kamber himself suggests that our ‘will’ is engaged when, as one of the links in a deterministic chain, we cause cause the next event event to happen. happen. He then says that the ‘free’ part is because there may have been an undetermined event at some time before we played our part in the drama. Left at that, I don’t find this idea of free will convincing. However, I think that we can in fact combine determinism and randomness
to give us the third way we need. Professor Kamber asserts that random decisions would be “more like an uncontrolled spasm than a voluntary choice” and in his essay ‘Of Clouds and Clocks’, Karl Popper refers to random brain events as producing what he disparagingly calls ‘snap decisions’. But those are wholly unwarranted unwarranted evaluations. evaluations. Random events at the atomic level in the brain need not emerge as fully-formed decisions: they could present themselves in a variety of ways – as ideas, doubts, desires, connections, connections, or or insights – in other words, as precursors to decisions. And because because our thoughts, thoughts, however they they arise, are ultimately the subject of our (relatively) rational checking processes, then even randomly generated randomly generated thoughts thoughts need be no more dangerous to our sanity than a suggestion randomly read in a book or arising from a discussion with a friend; and they could be just as productive of rational change. This may be a significant way of making us look at things differently. And we can go one step further: what if some random event deep in Scrooge’s cortex ultimately set off a series of hallucinations which, in turn, made him reflect on whether he wanted to continue on his his miserly path? path? His decision to ‘mend his ways’ would be both rational and unpredictable. Do we need to ask for anything more as a description of how free will may work? Is that that not the missing missing third way? P AUL BUCKINGHAM A NNECY NNECY , FRANCE Animal Autonomy Arguments DEAR EDITOR : I’m sure it was just coincidence that Shawn Thompson’s article about the pursuit of rights for chimpanzees was in the Humour edition of Philosophy Now Now (111); but the arguments for chimps to be legally persons and so the subject of Habeas Corpus seem to me, as a lawyer, to be, shall we say, a bit thin. The chimpanz chimpanzees’ ees’ self-app self-appoint ointed ed legal legal representative, Mr Wise, first argues that the definition of a legal person has changed over the years: “At different times in Western Culture, certain classes of humans – such as women, children, slaves or natives – were not legally full persons... in contemporary law, corporations have the status of ‘person’ even though they’re not intelligent beings like apes...” This is a non-argument. Slaves were conveniently regarded as less than human precisely in April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 41
Letters order to deny them the rights common to human beings. Women in Britain did not have the same voting rights as men until 1928, but no British court suggested that women women were were theref therefore ore not ‘full ‘full perso persons’ ns’ and hence unable to rely on Habeas Corpus. All we see from these examples are classes of humans finally being recognised as members of the same species, and so entitled to the same treatment under the law as all other humans. And ‘corporations’ are simply a legal fiction created by Statute to give limited liability to the very real ‘persons’ running or putting their money into them. So then, that’s hardly an argument for the Courts, independently of the Legislature, to decide to confer personhood on other great apes. Wise’s wider argument argument is that that Habeas Habeas Corpus should be used to protect the autonomy of all “autonomous and selfdetermining beings.” In his opinion apes have these qualities and are sufficiently like us to warrant the protection we give ourselves. As highlighted in the same article, some specialists in chimpanzee behaviour disagree. With our fellow human beings we are at least members of the same species, and that makes it very difficult to say that a right to liberty for one should not be the same for everyone else. But apes? Clearly the Courts could decide to cross the line based on the divided opinions of experts, but this would be a major major shift shift in jurisprudence jurisprudence.. Judges mostly leave major major changes changes in the law to the Legislature, that is, the democratic will of the people, rather than taking decisions about obviously contentious propositions into their own hands. I suggest that that is the right course here, too. THOMAS JEFFREYS, W ARWICKSHIRE DEAR EDITOR : I have been a volunteer with the Gray Gray Whale Whale Census Census and and BehavBehavior Project off of Los Angeles for thirty years, years, and often witness witness harassm harassment ent of of whales whales by boaters, boaters, kayakers, kayakers, and news news agencies out to get a good picture. The problem here is not autonomy, but respect. Just last spring, I witnessed three boats harass a mother humpback whale and her calf for three hours. In these situations, the whales often dive and move to another location nearby; but all the boaters have to do is wait for the whale to resurface, and then they go over and start the harassment all over again. Calling NOAA and other agencies has little effect regarding this kind of ‘on the spot’ harass42 Philosophy Now ● April/May April/May 2016
ment. This fact only reemphasizes the importance of respect. Being autonomous is one thing, but how one uses that autonomy to engage in harassment or to remove oneself from harassment, is another. With such an uphill battle for the legal treatment of animals as Wise is encountering, I can tell you from hands-on experience that the first step is respect. Without respect, no one will listen. Such is proven by women getting equal rights to men but still earning lesser pay; and black people gaining their civil rights but still suffering the majority of arrests. Respect is key. Without Without respect respect,, equal equal civil civil rights may be legal, but not respected. CORINE SUTHERLAND LOS A NGELES NGELES
Detail of Lawrence Lee’s design for the Royal Society of Chemistry (not its natural colours)
In The Light of History DEAR EDITOR : Your readers may like to know that the picture of William of Occam that illustrates your article on him in Issue 111 is taken from a stained glass window window in the the paris parish h church church at Ockha Ockham m which which was was design designed ed and and made made by my father, Lawrence Lee, in 1985. I visited this church in 2010 with my friend Paula Bailey, who took the photographs, which now seem to pop up all over the place whenever whenever William William of Occam Occam is mentione mentioned! d! Like many artists, my father had a philosophical turn of mind. After all, art is another way of exploring the mysteries of existence. Of course, most of his windows explore that aspect of philosophy which is defined as ‘theology’, but there are plenty of examples of wider themes. Many of his windows windows depict depict earth, earth, air, water and and fire, fire,
the ancient foundation of scientific knowledge which still holds good today. He also followed Plato and Kepler in believing geometry to be the governing factor of life, and this is evident in his magnificent ‘abstract’ windows in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s building in Burlington House, Piccadilly. He made another window concerning someone of potential interest to your readers. In St Dunstan’s Church, Canterbury, is his memorial window to Thomas More, the author of Utopia (1516), who is shown surrounded by his family and friends, and events of his life. S TEPHEN LEE Absurd Disagreements? DEAR EDITOR : I’m pleased that my article ‘Dancing with Absurdity’ in Issue 110 stimulated discussion. I appreciate the many thoughtful comments and respond to them below. 1. Russell Berg wrote that when I park my car and later return to it I expect to see it rather than a pumpkin. So, contrary to what I say, I do assess probabilities. In the opening paragraphs of the article I acknowledge the disjunction between my belief in radical skepticism and the way I conduct my daily life. But my expectations do not rebut radical skepticism. 2. Jon Cape disagrees with my assertion that without some certainty to rest on, probability cannot be meaningfully assessed. Probabilities Probabilities can be figured mathematically, mathematically, as when we assess the likelihood that a coin will turn up heads ten times in a row. But that requires at a minimum that we be certain of the laws of probability; certain that the coin is not smudged or otherwise biased to one side; and certain that no chicanery is involved. Or we can assess probabilities by evaluating our own experiences. As Cape wrote, “If I run for a bus, I improve the probability probability that I will catch it...” Not necessarily. You’d have to be certain that the ground wasn’t very slippery, that the bus driver wasn’t having fun with you, that a hungry tiger wasn’t lying in wait for the runner, and so forth. Such examples may be dismissed as silly, but we have no way of knowing how likely they are. Someone somewhere is surprised almost daily to find out that their lovable friend and neighbor is a serial killer or spy or terrorist or...
Letters 3. John Comer wrote that, though individuals cannot be certain of anything, knowledge is a collective endeavor. Maybe so, but the collective collective might be wrong. At one one time people people collectively believed that the Earth was flat and that it was the center of the universe. 4. D.N. Dimmitt argued that an argument that leads to an absurd or unreasonable conclusion is fallacious. It would be a serious impediment to progress if an apparently valid argument is rejected only because the conclusion makes people uncomfortable. uncomfortable. If an argument is fallacious, find the fallacy. The history of science is full of seemingly absurd conclusions that turned out to be correct. 5. Tracey Braverman argued that, if it is impossible to know anything, then I have no right to claim that radical skepticism is true. And, since I claim that reasoning is an unreliable tool, it is hypocritical of me to use reasoning to try to prove my case. It is not self-contradictory to say that we can know nothing other than that we can know nothing. And, if there are no fallacies in my reasoning, then either radical skepticism is correct or we must reject reasoning as a way to the truth. Either of those conclusions requires a profound change in worldview, at least for most people including myself. That’s scary, because I’m convinced that there are no fallacies in my reasoning. FRED LEAVITT, O AKLAND, CA https://fredleavitt.word https://fredleavitt.wordpress.com press.com
DEAR EDITOR : Audrey Borowski’s article ‘Al Qaeda and ISIS’ in Issue 111 presents the reader with a dilemma. Whilst some might sympathise with the complaints about Western “hypocrisy and double ges standards” in Osama Bin Laden’s Messa Laden’s Messages to the World or World or perhaps even with ISIS’s relentless efforts to usher in an anticipated apocalypse, the sceptical observer also sees an authoritarian God demanding obedience at any cost, and requiring the committing of atrocities in his name. The adoption of any any fundamentalist fundamentalist belief – a belief based on unchallengeable authority – absolves followers from personal responsibility. Whatever misgivings one may have about the theological suppositions of Christianity, the very idea that God is love, and that all men are equal in his sight, presents a contrasting theistic argument to unquestioning fanaticism. With terror threats unpredictable and indiscriminate, and carried out by individuals or cells rather than armies, retaliation can too easily prove indiscriminate too. Western humanism is based on a broad respect for life in all its diversity, its fragility and its uniqueness, and overcoming the brutal darkness of terrorism may ultimately depend on the communal sharing of such a vision; vision; a revalu revaluatio ation n of belief belief in in the the promopromotion of individual achievement and purpose for the benefit of all, and exposure of indoctrination as a form of abuse. REENBANK , MOSTERTON JOHN G REENBANK
the one and only possible choice, and usually a desirable one. (We often call our ability to act in spite of uncertainty, ‘judgement’.) Again, this isn’t to say that we can never calculate calculate a best course of action, only that when we can’t we still act, and then adorn ourselves with reasons. The whole point of a computer, by contrast, is to avoid arbitrary picking. While we need to to rationalize because we’re so bad at following logics, computcomputers are learning to follow logics so quickly there’s no point in teaching them to rationalize. In short, if we still need judgement , then we should let humans do what they do best. While Newman’s Newman’s examples examples sugges suggest t that empathy helps us understand others in some special way, we would do well to remember three things. Firstly, the literature of social psychology amply demonstrates how poorly we empathize with those we see as different – a problem computers are unlikely to face. Secondly, empathy amounts to putting ourselves in others’ shoes – that is, understanding understanding the logic they followed. Thirdly, empathy is perhaps the primary reason we don’t think critically about the bullshit we and others use to make our logics palatable. Obviously, computers are still far from understanding most of our logics; but to me at least, teaching them to think like us looks like teaching them empathy. Ideally, however, coding empathy won’t also require coding credulity. Killer Logic The proble problem m is our faith faith in our our judgejudgeDEAR EDITOR : I was perplexed by Robert ment. It buttresses our confidence in ourNewman’s unsatisfying critique of selves when we play sovereign, legislator, autonomous killing machines (‘Can Godly Causes and Effects judge, judge, and and executiv executivee – the the roles roles that that regureguDEAR EDITOR : Roger Jennings argues Robots Be Ethical?’, Issue 110). The orilarly require under-determined, ‘execu(Letters, Issue 112) that the word ‘God’ is gin of my complaint is his final argument, tive’ decisions. We who make important conceptually incoherent. incoherent. He seems to be that humans can assess factors machines decisions must be endowed with nigh saying that the concept itself cannot can’t. I find it to be quite the opposite. itself cannot be divine judgement, or so the story goes... made coherent. Yet there seems no obviHumans can calculate, of course; but not We don’t, don’t, in fact, fact, need need judgem judgement ent to to the ous sense in which he can be correct. very well. Where Where we excel, at least comextent we play these roles, however, Even taking a minimal definition of pared to machines, is in making and then because in them we just make the rules God – say, something like ‘First Cause’ Cause’ – justifying under-determined under-determined decisions: and precedents. The capacity to judge the concept is very coherent: as coherent, when the information information we have and the with which the rest rest of of us are endow endowed ed in fact, as the concept of a causal chain, logic we follow are insufficient to clearly then amounts to the ability to follow the which everyone everyone will will recogniz recognizee as quite quite an identify the best course of action, we can arbitrary decrees of authority. In other ordinary scientific one. To fill out the still act. We rule out the preposterous, words, words, fallin falling g for rationaliz rationalization ationss can only Theistic Theistic claim claim to to say say ‘the ‘the First First Cause Cause is the outlandish, and the impossible in help our leaders’ efforts to develop intelligent’ would create no more diffiorder to arbitrarily pick one among the autonomous killing machines and pretexts culty, since ‘intelligent’ is also a very comremaining possibilities. possibilities. We don’t ‘fly in for their use. Paradoxically, the only hope monly-used adjective, that a great many of the face of logic’ here; our logics are simof clearing the air of such nonsense might us find quite coherent, especially when we ply insufficient. insufficient. Then – and this could be be be nuanced, intricate, and digital logics use it in reference to other humans. the greatest of human geniuses – we justhat reduce uncertainty to the point DR S. A NDERSON tify ourselves using an elaborate poetry of where rationaliza NDERSON, rationalization tion becomes becomes obsole obsolete. te. LONDON, ONTARIO reasons that make our action seem to be PETER BRAUN, O TTAWA , ONTARIO April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 43
AMERICAN PSYCHO
Films
Matthew Gildersleeve goes to the movies with Jacques Lacan.
acques Lacan (1901-1981) was a will do so, so, for instance, instance, in the form of halhalpus complex is overcome through the French psychoanalytical philosopher. I lucinations or delusions. As Grigg explains, ‘paternal metaphor’ of the Name-of-the would like to apply some of his ideas ideas to the “real is capable of intruding into the Father. This “is an operation in which the Mary Harron’s Harron’s film American film American Psycho (2000) subject’s experience experience in a way that finds him Name-of-the-Father is substituted for the in order to understand the psychotic or her devoid of any means of protection” mother’s desire, thereby producing a new behaviour of its protagonist, ‘Patrick Bate(ibid ). ). Hence, as Lacan says, “That which species of meaning.” Without this new man’. My hope is that explaining the film has not seen the light of day in the symmeaning concerning the desire of the in these terms will contribute to a better bolic appears in the real.” This is exactly mother provided by the signifier of the Psycho. understanding of psychosis. Specifically, I what we find find in American in American Psycho. Name-of-the-Father, “the subject is left want to to show that we we can understa understand nd ‘Bate‘BateIn even deeper Lacanian terms, the prey to... the mother’s unregulated desire, man’s’ psychotic behaviour in Lacanian movie demonstrates that the main character confronted by an obscure enigma... that the an Psycho Psycho creates the imaginary terms, since his behaviour at the end of this in Americ in American subject lacks the means to comprehend” movie demonstrates the lived experience of reality of ‘Patrick Bateman’ through fore(ibid ). ). The foreclosure of this primordial psychosis, where, as Lacan says, “That closure of a ‘primordial signifier’ (symbol) – signifier is therefore catastrophic for the which has not seen the the light of day day in the the ‘the Name-of-the-Father’, which we might person undergoing it, resulting in psychosis. symbolic appears in the real.” think of as the idea of paternal authority. All will be revealed. Lacanian scholars commonly agree that the The Real In American Psycho foreclosure of this primordial signifier is the In his article ‘Diagnosing an American Lacan & Psychosis International Review Review of Psychiatry Psychiatry,, cause of psychosis. This is because this sigPsycho’ ( International To unders understand tand Lacan’s Lacan’s interpre interpretatio tation n of nifier allows a person to overcome the 21, 3), Wayne Parry provides a summary of psychosis, it is imperative to first grasp his Oedipus complex, since “Its function in the the plot of the movie. The narrative cenconcept of ‘foreclosure’. In Lacan, In Lacan, LanOedipus complex is to be the vehicle of the tres around ‘Patrick Bateman’s’ murder of law that regulates desire – both the subject’s his colleague Paul Allen. As Parry says, guage, and Philosophy Philosophy (2009), Russell Grigg explains that foreclosure is an “initial, pri“Bateman chooses to kill Allen out of envy. desire and the omnipotent desire of the mary expulsion” of an idea or symbol whose maternal figure.” In other words, the Oedi- They meet meet for dinner and afterward afterwards, s, in expulsion “constitutes a domain that is That awful moment external to, in the sense of radically alien or when your lawyer foreign to, the subject and the subject’s tells you you aren’t world. world. Lacan Lacan calls calls this domain domain the the ‘real’.” ‘real’.” a serial killer. Thus the ‘real’ ‘real’ in Lacan’s Lacan’s sense is not not simsimply what we mean by the everyday use of the term. Rather, it refers to a world that is psychologically separated from a person’s own inner world; and foreclosure is the process of psychological separation. These concepts are also fundamental to understanding ‘Bateman’s’ behaviour in Americ in American an Psycho Psycho.. I put ‘Patrick Bateman’ in inverted commas because, as will be explained, ‘Patrick Bateman’ is not real not real -ly -ly Patrick Bateman. It is also important to grasp the real in contrast to the Lacanian category of the symbolic, which is that aspect of human experience that involves the production and understanding of the meaning of an experience. When an experience is not meaningfully understood in the symbolic category, it is rejected and “subsists outside outside of symbolization – that is, as what is ‘foreclosed’” in the real. But although the real can be excluded from the symbolic field, it may nevertheless appear in ‘the real’. It
J
44 Philosophy Now ● April/May April/May 2016
Film Review
0 0 0 2 S M L I
F E T A
G S N O I
L ©
Bateman’s apartment, Allen is very drunk and Bateman attacks him with an axe and disposes of the body. He changes Allen’s answerphone message to say that he [Allen] has gone to London and packs a bag to corroborate the supposed trip.” After this, “Bateman continues his murderous spree, often using Allen’s apartment as the site of the murder or a place to keep the bodies.” Yet ‘Bateman’s ‘Bateman’s’’ serial serial killing killing suddenly suddenly unravels towards the end of the film. “When Bateman is caught by a police car having killed an elderly lady, he kills the policemen and blows up the patrol car. Having killed a night porter and a janitor. he phones his lawyer, confessing all his crimes and the events of that night.” However, after his confession of his serial killing to his lawyer, we start to see ‘the real’ intruding on ‘Bateman’s’ psychotic symbolic universe: “The following morning, Bateman goes to Allen’s apartment only to find that it is empty and undecorated. As he checks a closet where he left a few bodies, bodies, an estate estate agent asks him to leave after Bateman questions what had happened there.” This is in in fact fact the first of three three crucia cruciall moments in this film where we recognise the true nature of the psychosis of ‘Patrick Bateman’. Here the truth that Bateman has been foreclosing cannot be kept excluded: in the earlier parts of the film, ‘Bateman’ had used “Allen’s apartment as the site of the murder or a place to keep the bodies” (‘Diagnosing...’, p.281), but now the apartment is empty. This gives the viewer viewer a clue clue that that ‘Bate‘Bateman’s’ symbolic universe is not what it appears to be. As Slavoj Žižek puts it, this moment is when “the barrier separating the real from reality… is torn down, when the real real overflo overflows ws reality reality”” ( Looking Looking
dian Horror, American Bodies’, ( Brno Studies in English, 39 (2), 2013). Loiselle quotes the transcript from the film:
Patrick: Don’t you know who I
am? I’m not Davis. I’m Patrick Bateman. We talk on the phone all the time. Don’t you recognize me? You’re my lawyer. Now, Carnes, listen. Listen very, very carefully. I killed Paul Allen, and I liked it. I can’t make myself any clearer. theless appear in reality.” Thus Lacan’s remark, “That which has not seen the light Lawyer : But that’s simply not possible. And I don’t find this funny anymore. of day in the symbolic appears in the real.” This isis exactly exactly what we find find in this this scene scene in Patrick: It never was supposed to be. Why isn’t it possible? American American Psycho Psycho, when the real intrudes on Davis’s psychosis. Lawyer : It’s just not. The conclusion conclusion that Davis lacks the Patrick: Why not, you stupid bastard? means to comprehend the desire of the Lawyer : Because I had dinner with Paul Allen… twice in London, just ten days ago. Other – what the lawyer is saying – is sup-
Films
Jacques Lacan
This is a crucia cruciall moment moment to retro retrospec spec-tively understand everything everything in the film up until then. This scene highlights the expul Awry: Awry: An An Introd Introducti uction on To To Jacque Jacquess Lacan Lacan sion and foreclosure of the real in ‘BateThrough Popular Culture, 1992, p.20). man’s’ psychotic symbolism, since it turns There are also two other moments in out that not only did ‘Bateman’ not kill Paul the film when the real overflows into Allen, Allen, but but ‘Bate ‘Bateman’ man’s’ s’ real real name is Davis! Davis! ‘Bateman’s’ symbolic world. The second Unfortunately, what the lawyer, Carnes, of these is even more significant than the is saying to ‘Bateman’ is “radically alien or first. “Bateman runs into his lawyer in a foreign to the subject and the subject’s bar and asks if he got the phone message world.” It’s alien to Davis (‘Bateman’) (‘Bateman’) last night. The lawyer believes that the call world.” was a joke. joke. Bateman tries tries to convince him because, as Lacan might put it, “the desire of the Other” has been foreclosed from that it is true but the lawyer states that he Davis’s psychotic symbolic reality (in this had dinner twice with Paul Allen in Loninstance, ‘the Other’ is the lawyer, who don ten days prior, leaving the reality of called him Davis and who told him that the events ambiguous” (‘Diagnosing an Paul Allen is not dead; and so the desire of American Psycho’). Psycho’). the Other is what the lawyer believes). Yet It is important to note something else although Davis may have excluded a fact from this scene that was missed by Parry from his symbolic universe “it may neverbut picked up by André Loiselle in ‘CanaFilm Review
ported by the final scene of the movie, where after hearing hearing this revelation revelation from Carnes, Davis returns to his friends’ table in confusion. His friends are watching Ronald Reagan give a speech on television, and arguing about whether or not Reagan is lying. One of his friends asks, “Bateman? Come on, what do you think?” This small detail detail demonstrates demonstrates that Davis Davis lacks the means to “comprehend the desire of the Other”: with this detail, the viewer can understand understand that we are now watching events through ‘Bateman’s’ ‘Bateman’s’ psypsychotic symbolic universe again. So the Lacanian interpretation of this scene is that Davis lacks the means to comprehend the desire of the Other which appeared in the real as an intrusion to the psychotic symbolic universe in which Davis imagined he was a serial killer called ‘Patrick Bateman’. The other other moment moment in which which the the viewer sees the way things really are instead of through Davis’s fantasy, is when his secretary is shown to be “leafing through his [Davis’s] diary alone in his office, where she discovers an escalating number of poisonous doodles and designs devoted to the desecration of women’s bodies, much like the various murders he claims to have committed” (from ‘Canadian Horror...’ p.130). With this this and the other other two moments we have examined, the viewer can see that, as Loiselle says, “This scene clearly establishes the overriding possibility that ‘Bateman’s’ violence has all along been confined to the level of daydream and fantasy.” The viewer can can also also now recognise recognise that the majority of the film has been shown through this psychotic fantasy.
7 0 0 2
E I N O R
I © T I A R T R O P N A C A
L
© MATTHEW MATTHEW GILDERSLEEVE 2016
Matthew Gildersleeve Gildersleeve teaches teaches and and researches researches at at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 45
Philosophy Now Shop philosophynow.org/digital) .org/digital) Digital Editions (for more info visit philosophynow P hi l lo s o so ph o hy N p o w w
Apps for iPad/iPhone, Android and Kindle Fire
Zinio
Philosophy Now ’s ’s very own app is available in Apple’s Newsstand. The Android version of it is in the Google Play store and there is a Kindle Fire version too. Free sample issue inc.
There is also an edition for the Zinio app on iPad and Android. Single issue or ongoing subscription.
Kindle
PN Website Subscriptions
Philosophy Now is available for Amazon’s Kindle. You can buy a single issue or an ongoing subscription. (30 day free trial period)
Individual print subscriptions to Philosophy Now don’t include Kindle, Nook, app etc but do include a password for our website edition plus our archive of 2,000+ articles from past issues. (Your password is available on request or is sent automatically if you subscribe online.) online.) We also sell these web web subscriptions subscriptions separately, from our store at philosophynow.org/shop
Nook Philosophy Now ’s ’s edition for Barnes & Noble’s Nook reader also works brilliantly on the Nook app on iPhones. (14 day free trial)
Back Issu Issues es – Pap Paper er Issue 98 Camus: Life, Ambivalence, Absurdity, Transcendence, etc / Testing
Epicurus / Giordano Bruno / What Is Philosophical Counseling? Issue 99 God’s God’s Existence, or Not: William Lane Craig, Simon Blackburn, Van Van Harvey Harvey,, Timothy Timothy Chappell Chappell / Conscio Consciousnes usnesss / Kierkega Kierkegaard ard Issue 100 Philosophy & Language: Chomsky, Chomsky, Davidson, Derrida, Deleuze, Proust / Happiness / Rorty / What is Knowledge, Truth, Causation? Issue 101 Plato & Democracy: Democracy: Critiques & Analyses / Kant and Rand / Feelings & Philosophy / Gandhi Opera review / Obit. Colin Wilson Issue 102 Ethics in Society: Prison; Consumer Responsibility; Drugs in Sport; Judging Judging Islamic Islamic Culture Culture / Brief Brief Life Life:: Marx Marx / Exist Existenc encee / Empi Empirici ricism sm Issue 103 Wittge Wittgenste nstein, in, Tractatus : Cannons, Cases & Codes / Lenk on Dewey / Midgle Midgleyy on History History of Philos Philosoph ophyy / Conse Conseque quentia ntialism lism is imposs impossibl iblee Issue 104 The Other Other Greek Greeks: s: PrePre-Soc Socrat ratics ics,, Democ Democritu ritus, s, Diog Diogene enes, s, Epic Epicuru uruss / Nietzsche on Love / The Morality Machine / Obscurantism / Fichte Issue 105 Peace: Innate Violence?; Pacificism not passivism; personal peace; love & happiness / Darwin / Berkeley’s 4th Dialogue / Short Hist of Phil Issue 106 How to Think: Critically Reason, Solve Paradoxes, Not Refute Your Yourself self,, etc etc / Hege Hegel’ l’s heirs heirs review reviewss / Alie Aliens ns vs vs Vege Vegetar tarian ianss / Rort Rorty y Issue 107 Modern Modern French French Philo Philosop sophy: hy: Foucault Foucault,, Derrid Derrida, a, Baud Baudrill rillard ard,, Kriste Kristeva, va, Badiou / Je Suis / Noam Noam Chomsk Chomskyy speec speech h / Pers Persona onall Ident Identity ity Suis Liber Liberal al / Issue 108 Art: Encount Encounterin eringg it, it, proble problems ms with with it, it, what what is it, it, and and where’ where’s it going? / Music / Descartes vs Animals Animals / Self-interest in morality Issue 109 Science & Morality / Einstein’s Ethics / Prisoner’s Dilemma and Evolution / Defending Badiou / Atheism on on Trial Trial / Clueless
Issue 110 Liberty & Equality, inc. Redistribution, Surveillance, Paradoxes,
Philosopher Citizens / Scepticism / Albert Camus / Common Sense Issue 111 Humo(u)r: the reasons, ethics & limits of humo(u)r, and beyond /
Scrooge’s free will / Justice for apes / Wittgenstein vs Occam / Tarski Issue 112 Free Will: libertarianism, determinism, compatibilism, akrasia... /
self-interest / Nietzsche & Dali / Wilson’s Life / Singer is wrong
We We also still have copies of these earlier back issues: issues: Issues 2, 4, 35, 39-47, 55-80, 82, 84, 85, 87-89, 91-97
Back issues cost £3.75 each if you live in the UK (inc p&p) or US$10/Can$10/A$10/NZ$12/UK£6.50 elsewhere (via airmail). For every three back issues you buy, we’ll give you a fourth for free (please tell us which which you would would like). For full details detail s and tables of contents of all back issues, please visit our website shop at philosophynow.org/shop PDFs: Our website shop also sells individual back issues as downloadable PDFs.
your back issues issues a secure and and happy Binders: Why not give your Philosophy Philosoph y Now home? Our smart green binders each hold 12 magazines. Price per binder: UK£8.75, USA $25, Australia A$27, Canada Can$27, New Zealand NZ$34, or Rest of World UK£15.
Back Issues on CD Philosophy Now has been published since 1991, so it is hardly surprising that we’re often asked for back issues which have long since sold out. Therefore we’ve put our first eighty issues onto four CDs in PDF format. The CDs work equally well on Mac and PC, and when opened on your computer screen will look very much like the pages in the original magazines. Vol. 1: Issues 01-20; Vol. 2: Issues 21-40; Vol. 3: Issues 41-60; Vol. 4: Issues 61-80 Single vol. (1, 2, 3 or 4) UK£15 Two volumes: UK£25 Three volumes: UK£35 Four volumes: UK£45
US$23 US$40 US US$55 US$ US$69
Can$35 Can$55 Ca Can$75 Can Can$95
Aus$35 Aus$55 Aus$75 Au Aus$95
NZ$40 RoW£17 NZ$65 RoW£30 NZ NZ$90 RoW£40 NZ$ NZ$115 RoW£51
IP-BASED ONLINE ACCESS is available for institutions – please visit philosophynow.org/institu philosophynow.org/institutions tions 46 Philosophy Now ● April/May April/May 2016
Philosophy Now Subscriptions Philosophy Now is sold from newsstands and bookstores bookstores in more more than a dozen dozen countries countries – but if you subscribe you can have each new issue delivered to your own front door and save money too. Better still, individual print subscriptions include password access to our website edition and the complete archive of past issues. Subscribe today at philosophynow.org or fill out and return one of the coupons below.
6 IDEA-PACKED ISSUES FOR £15.50/US$32! Questions and inquiries: please email subscriptions@philosophynow
[email protected] .org or phone 01959 534171 To To tell us about a change of address, address, please email addresschange@philosop addresschange@philosophynow hynow.org .org
U.K. / Rest of World
United States
Name
Name
Address
Address
Email (for password) Please circle or underline one of the options below:
Email (for password) Please select from the options below:
• I’d like to subscribe to Philosophy Now for 6 issues,
• I’d like to subscribe to Philosophy Now for 6 issues, at a cost of $32.00 starting with #113/#114 (delete as appropriate) • I’d like to subscribe to Philosophy Now for 12 issues, at a cost of $59.00 starting with #113/#114 (delete as appropriate)
UK Canada New Zealand
£15.50 Can $37 NZ $49
Australia Europe Rest of World
Aus $40 £16.50 £19.50
• I’d like to subscribe to Philosophy Now for 12 issues, UK Canada New Zealand
£28.00 Can $69 NZ $93
Australia Europe Rest of World
Aus $75 £31.00 £35.00
starting with Issue 113/Issue 114 (delete as appropriate) • I’d like to buy these Philosophy Now Back Issues CDs:
• I’d like to buy these Philosophy Now Back Issues CDs: Volume 1/Volume 2/Volume 3/Volume 4. (please circle)
• I’d like to buy the following paper back issues: ______________________________________
Volume 1/Volume 2/Volume 3/Volume 4. (please circle)
• I’d like to buy ___ binders to hold my back issues.
• I’d like to buy the following paper back issues: ______________________________________
TOTAL AMOUNT PAYABLE: PAYABLE: $_______ $_____ __
• I’d like to buy ___ binders to hold my back issues. TOTAL AMOUNT PAYABLE: _________
Please make your check payable to ‘Philosophy Documentation Center’ or fill or fill in your card details below: Card no. Expiry______ Security Code______ Name on card___________________
or fill in your Please make your cheque payable to ‘Philosophy Now’ or fill Mastercard /Visa /Maestro card details below: Card no. Expiry______ Security Code______ Name on card___________________ Philosophy Now Subscriptions and send it to: Kelvin House, Grays Road, Westerham, Westerham , Kent TN16 2JB, United Kingdom
and send it to:
Philosophy Documentation Center, P.O. Box 7147, Charlottesville, VA 22906-7147 U.S.A.
(You can also order on
800-444-2419
or email
[email protected])
[email protected])
April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 47
Peter Caws critiques Jacques Lacan’ Lacan’ss psychoanalytic obscurantism, whilst Terri Murray surveys Walter Benjamin’s perspective on the media within cultures.
Books Anxiety by Jacques Lacan, Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. A. R. Price T SOME OME THIRT HIRTY Y YEAR YEARS S AGO AGO, A an academic retreat retreat in the south of France, I France, I met a young woman who announced herself as a lacanienne lacanien ne – a disciple of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-1981). (1901-1981). At that time Lacan’s so-called ‘seminars’ were being being published one after another in French, as the Semi naires naires . Howen’t really seminars, more like ever, they weren’t wer meandering lectures transcribed transcribed by faithful followers. There were already a lot of them , and more to come. Reading them was obligatory for people peop le like my new acquaintance, and I wondered how she managed man aged to take it “ la lecture flottique,” she said, “la all in. “ Je pra pratique,” techniqu e of floating tante” tante” – “I use the technique reading.” I knew about attention flottante – a psychoanalytic practice in which the analyst allows him- or or herself to listen as it were loosely to the patient, without with out any expectastate of tion of particular particular clues to the latter’s state of notes, almost almost mind, without taking an y notes, he without without listeni listening ng at all; rather, rather, letting letting t he patient’s unconscious speak directly to his or her own. own. But I hadn’t come across the technique as applied to reading, re ading, unless in the form of form of what we used to call ‘skimLacan proclaiming his genius
2 1 0 2 Z E N I T R A
M E T A R A
G O I C A N G
I © T I A R T R O P N A C A
L
48 Philosophy Now ● April/May April/May 2016
ming’. Maybe it could be called ‘reading with the third third eye’, after ‘listening ‘listening with the third ear’ – a name given to the relevant psychoanalytic practice by Theodor Reik, one of the few precursors other than Freud for whom Lacan seems to have had any genuine esteem. Faced with the three-hundred-odd three-hundred-odd dense pages of the tenth Seminar , at two removes from the voice of the master – first transcribed, then translated – I would have liked to have managed floating reading in my turn, but the conscience of the reviewer, along with all the bizarre flotsam on the surface of Lacan’s thoughts I kept bumping into, defeated me. In any case I doubted whether I could get in touch with Lacan’s unconscious, unconscious, since it was clear from the beginning that what he was offering – an effort to bind the faithful to an ever-tighter adherence to his idiosyncratic version of psychoanalysis psychoanalysis – was, on one level at least, eminently conscious. So I ploughed through the whole book, increasingly bemused as I went on at the thought that my job was to make something of it that would be of interest to the Now. readership of Philosophy of Philosophy Now The Unintelligibility of Jacques Lacan It might be asked why I took on this task in the first place. The reason was that back in the days when I was trying to make something philosophically interesting out of the structuralist movement, Lacan was one of the writers who seemed to offer some promise in that direction. He occupied a position in psychoanalysis analogous to that of Claude Lévi-Strauss in anthropology, Roland Barthes in literary criticism, Louis Althusser in Marxism, or Michel Foucault Foucault in the history history of ideas. ideas. His early publications, such as the Ecrits the Ecrits Notebooks ], [ ], while verbose (but which French thinker isn’t?) still had a form of intelligibility that could be reconstructed with a bit of work. I thought it would be interesting to revisit all that. One of the Seminars , the eleventh, was published years ago as The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1973) Psychoanalysis (1973) – a largely successful attempt on Lacan’s part to justify his ‘return to Freud’ after his expulsion from the official French psycho-
Detail from the cover of Anxiety , after M.C. Escher
analytic community and his single-handed Freudienne de Paris . foundation of L’Ecole of L’Ecole Freudienne That book, no doubt heavily heavily edited and and rewritten from the seminar transcript, showed that he could be fairly straightfor ward when he he wanted to be. Among the fans at his weekly performances, however, he didn’t have to bother; professionals professionals and hangers-on alike flocked to their guru’s presentations and drank in every word – with what degree of comprehension comprehension it is is sometimes hard to fathom. Seminar is The French title of the tenth Seminar is L’Angoisse, L’Angoisse, whose translation as Anxiety as Anxiety is already problematic. A correct English translation of angoisse is ‘anguish’, whereas ‘anxiety’ is a correct English translation of the French anxiété . At least the two languages seem to be making the same distinction in the same way. However, one of the French definitions of angoisse does map pretty well on to the ordinary non-medical meaning of the English ‘anxiety’, whilst anxiété is as a the specifically medical use of anxiété is angoisse. So is Lacan’s pathological type of angoisse. anxiety pathological? It would have been helpful to have some clarification of this Book Reviews Reviews
Books decline – is marked, I feel, with some haste and little linguistic tangle. even some disarray, I’d say, in relation to the refer The origina originall French French public publication ation of ence in which, in the same era, the movement of L’Angoiss L’Angoissee appears to have been a limited edition, no doubt intended, like its spoken thought has put its trust, namely, the reference to original, for a relatively small audience of history… Since I have called on two witnesses professionals and cognoscenti. It came in here, Sartre and Heidegger, I won’t hesitate to call on a third, in so far as I don’t think him unworthy two hefty volumes, softbound in bright of representing those who are here, observing what orange, with no indication of publisher, or place or date of publication. Having tracked he is going to say, and that’s me” (pp.7-8). down one of the few original copies, I find that it was put out in 1982 by a small printNo hesitation then in enrolling himself ing house called Piranha (we can make of among the leading thinkers of his time. Yet it is notable that in all this he does not go that association what we will). The seminar into any detail as to the positions actually itself had taken place in 1962-3, the official French edition was published at Le Seuil in held by the philosophers in question, but 2004, and the English translation is part of just contents contents himself with with name-dropping. name-dropping. a series now being put out by Polity Press – This is quite quite characteristic characteristic of his mode mode of one can’t help wondering, with what readoperation – he comes across not as learned and scholarly, but as grandiose and narcisership in mind? Fifty-odd years is a long time to wait for the word from on high, and sistic. “Those who are here, observing it would seem that only those transfixed by what he is going going to say” is just one one example Lacan’s fame and charisma, or perhaps pro- of a recurring preoccupation with himself fessionally persuaded enough to wish to in relation to his audience: here they are, follow his eccentric example, would want to all of them, listening to me, so I must be as good as these other people. wade through through these these ramblin rambling g monologu monologues. es. Confident in his authority and domina The Seminars , together with Lacan’s other works, constitute a massive and repet- tion, Lacan talks down to these listeners, itive body of doctrine, intended to throw repeatedly alluding to what he has been light on the human condition and the practeaching them, what they will miss if they tice of psychiatry. I will return to the docdon’t attend regularly, what other people trines, but given the occasion of this review, have missed by not paying attention to him. A typical case: he recommends that will first address address the the claim, claim, sometimes sometimes direct and sometimes implied, that they are they look up the texts of Kurt Goldstein, of philosophical importance. ‘Anguish’ and “very accessible texts since they’ve been ‘anxiety’ belong to a closely-related cluster translated into French, to see how close of terms, including ‘fear’ and ‘dread’, which these formulations are to our own, and how much they’d gain in clarity by referhas been a happy hunting ground for exisring to ours more expressly” (p.60). Again, tentialists since Søren Kierkegaard (1813it’s all about him. Two delicious ironies 1855). This is Lacan’s chance to show the relevance of his concept of anxiety to the here: Goldstein’s work was actually done a recent history of philosophy, and he takes it decade or so earlier than Lacan’s; and in the very early pages of the Seminar . I Lacan takes pride in his own lack of clarity, his style having “a certain Gongorism provide here an example of the way he about it, as everyone knows” (p.42) (Luis approaches this topic, both to give a flavour de Gongora was famous for the deliberate of his style and the verbal padding and obscurity of his writing). After acknowlglancing commentary that is typical of his edging this similarity, Lacan says, “Well, I approach, and also to suggest how easily this book could have been a lot shorter, don’t give a damn.” with a bit bit of determined determined editing: editing: Assessing Lacan’s Doctrine “Everyone knows that projecting the I onto the Extracted from its vanity and verbosity, inroad to anxiety has for some time been the ambi- Lacanian doctrine does represent an tion of a philosophy philosophy that is termed existentialist. impressive theoretical structure, replete There’s no shortage of of references, from with borrowings borrowings from and and allusions to a Kierkegaard to Gabriel Marcel, Shestov, Berdyaev wide range of disciplines, above all of and a few others. Not all of them have the same course Freudian psychoanalysis, of which place, nor can they be used in the same way, but I Lacan considered himself the heir and insist on saying at the start of this disquisition that trustee; but also Saussurean linguistics, linguistics, and this philosophy – insofar as, from its patron saint, most especially, mathematical topology. named first off, down to those whose names I’ve This is not the place for for exposition of this listed after him, it incontestably shows some doctrine, which in its roundabout and frag-
Book Reviews
mentary way occupies the bulk of the book, but it is an occasion for commenting on the scientific standing of his theories. I happen to think that psychoanalysis psychoanalysis does belong among the sciences (see for example my ‘Psychoanalysis ‘Psychoanalysis as the Idiosyncratic Science of the Individual Subject’, Subject’, Psychoanalytic Psychology 20, 2003). Unfortunately, Lacan is of no help whatever in making this argument, because he manages to confuse the issue with spurious technicalities not obviously applicable to actual cases, and thus to cast doubt if not ridicule on the whole enterprise. It is true that the crucial concepts required for the analyst’s clinical enterprise are of enormous difficulty and complexity. As a case in point: what exactly is a living human subject? How are we embodied, how gendered, how stressed by life experiences, how affected by and how expressed in what language, how to be understood, how to be helped in dealing with the fears and the anguish anguish – not to mention the anxiety – produced in it by the hostility of the world and the body and other people? But is it at all useful to compare the human subject to a Moebius strip, as Lacan does (pp.96, 204, etc.), or to any of the other topological structures structures of higher dimensionality scattered through
A ‘higherdimensional structure’: A Klein bottle
April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 49
Books his pages? Moreover, it isn’t clear that he really understands any of them, although they do make for nice diagrams. Granted that the subject is experienced as it were from its inside whilst presenting itself to others as an outside; granted also that the Moebius strip strip manages the neat trick of appearing to have two sides, an inside and an outside, while in fact having only one continuous side – what light does the one fact throw on the other? Perhaps the metaphor is provocative, but its relevance for therapeutic clinicians unfamiliar with higher mathematics strikes me as beyond dubious. (It does provide the cover art for the book – an Escher graphic of six ants following one another around a lattice in the form of a Moebius strip – an apt image of Lacan and his seminar audiences.)
9 0 0 2 A C C E
S O L B A
P © T I A R T R O P R E D L O N A C A
L
Lacan, older and more distinguished
Here this reviewer begins to feel contrite, seeming to be making fun of a notable and distinguished figure of twentieth century culture. But these comments aren’t just sniping: they are a product of reading not only Anxiety only Anxiety but much more from the same source, and of personal if brief encounters with the author himself, as well as with other figures in French intellectual life who knew him, and knew also some of the patients who committed suicide while under his care, if ‘care’ is what it was (and in at least one case, case, in despair at not being admitted as his patient). Lacan wasn’t merely a theoretician, he was a therapist of repute who was at the same time not only unorthodox but often unscrupulous and exploitative, and he did great harm under the guise of being a benign father figure to a family of besot50 Philosophy Now ● April/May April/May 2016
ted acolytes. acolytes. In a review of Elisabeth R oudinesco’s oudinesco’s history of psychiatry in France, Raymond Tallis aptly dubbed dub bed him “the shrink from hell.” All this is not a recommendation recommendation not to read read this book – I have certainly c ertainly not done justice to its eccentric eccentric richness: for example, ple, its treatment of the fundamental complexity of the relation between subject subject and object, from the ‘ objet pet it it a a’ (a from autre), ‘the object’ with with a small ‘o’, to the fullfu llfledged fledged Other ( Autre Object, by way of Autre) as Object, the subject’s coming co ming to specular awareness in the the mirror-image of itself. The ‘ objet desire that petit a’ is any object of primitive desire that is not fully an object for a s ubject, on the part of a subject that that does not yet fully know that that it is a subject. That’s That’s one way of looking at it at least. le ast. And along the way is the flotsam flotsam I mentioned at the beginning, including details of the genitalia and sex life of exotic animals and insects, ins ects, as well as of the complementary complementary complexities of sadism and sadism and masochism. In this thi s connection Lacan takes issue w ith ith an old distinction that holds holds fear to be of some fearful object, but anxiety to be a state of apprehension without an object. No, he says, says, anxiety is not without an object, obje ct, although that object objec t often turns turns out to be an attitude attitude or state of mind of some Other Othe r on whom the anxious subject w ishes ishes to make an impression or from whom he or she wants recognition (a s in the case of the ‘performance anxiety’ many psychiatric pat ients ients are familiar with). No, b y all means read Lacan if Lacan if you have an appetite for long-w inded inded free association and bold bold if frequently impenetrable speculation. He’s sometimes quite good at these things. Just don’t take him at his own estimation, or expect to learn anything reliably useful useful from him about an y an y particular human being. We aren’t a ren’t all made like that. It’s not no t obvious that any of us are.
that takes place at a unique historical time and place, such as a literary salon, or in an edition of Philosophy of Philosophy Now magazine? Does the change from collective audience to solitary reader have any impact on your cognitive faculties, or even have political implications? Furthermore, Furthermore, does it make any difference if you’re reading this not in the print version, but via some earlytwenty-first-century twenty-first-century communication communication tech, such as a smartphone or an iPad?
Walter Benjamin’s Information Age The German German Jewish Jewish philosoph philosopher er Walter Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) certainly thought all this does make a difference. He had reason to reflect on new forms of communication. Hounded by Nazi propaganda, he settled in Paris, and later, after the fall of France, committed suicide while attempting to escape through Spain. Benjamin sought to develop a new kind of media critique, applicable to the new forms of media technology that were emerging in the twentieth century. In Walter Benjamin and the Media, Media , Dr Jaeho Kang Kang illuminates illuminates how and why BenBen jamin’s theoretical theoretical contribut contributions ions to to underunderstanding the development of the media are still relevant and applicable to today’s new technologies. For example, we might transpose Benjamin’s famous account of flânerie flânerie – the nineteenth century urban consumer’s whimsical whimsical street-stro street-strolling, lling, involving involving serial observations of street spectacle, of shop windows, windows, shop shop fronts, fronts, café café terraces, terraces, pedespedestrians – onto the twenty-first century habit of web surfing. There are many such interesting issues here, and Jaeho Kang’s masterful account of Benjamin’s life and work invites us to rediscover Benjamin’s unique and multifarious engagements with the question of how new media forms have shaped modern communication, and also how the different media themselves trans© PROF PETER CA WS 2016 form our experience, shape our perceptual Peter C aws is University Professor of Philosocapacities and faculties, and reconfigure ph y Emeritus at The George Washington Washington Uni- embodied experience in relation to both versity, Washington DC. private and public spaces. Consider Ben jamin’s account account of the the impact impact of printing printing • Anxiety: The The Seminar of of Jacques Jacques Lacan, Book Book X, on oral culture and storytelling, in particued. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. A. R. Pric e, Pric e, Polity Press, lar, its role in the social disintegration of 2014, 352 pp, $19.95 pb, ISBN: 074566041X community and the shift to an individualist social structure. In this way, print technology shaped the very constitution of modern lives, ushering in our epoch, in which visual Walter Benjamin & the communication predominates. Kang also Media by Jaeho Kang shows how such observations anticipated DOES OES IT MATT MATTER ER the analyses of later media theorists such as whether this review review is Marshall McLuhan and Jean Jean Baudrillard Baudrillard.. presented to you in a Benjamin is probably best known for his one-off public gathering highly influential essay The Work of Art in Book Reviews Reviews
Books Serial observations of street spectacle as gained by surfing the web
4 0 0 2 N N A M M
A F L O D U
R © O Y K O
T ; 4 1 0 : 2
T A F L E L L E P B A O R T Y M M O R © F S E I R S I A W P K ; C 5 O 0 L C 0 2 S A T Y I D L E E R C © T E N L E Ö R K T
; S 5 0 0 2 I
K I W S N O M M O C N A B R
U © Y E L E K R E
B
of communication technology closer to an Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936). Here he expounded the theory that what people, both spatially and humanly, so that sets apart works of art is their ‘aura’ – media users can be transformed from con which is precisely precisely what cannot be captured captured sumers or suppliers into engineers, ‘rein any reproduction. While an original art- functioning’ communications technology work possesses possesses a unique unique existence for progressive political ends. immersed in and arising from tradition Kang’s Medium In Culture and ritual and conditioned by a magical authenticity and authority, the age of Like Benjamin’s, Kang’s breadth of refmechanical reproduction demolished these erence is extraordinary. This may make conditions. The sense of art images and this book less accessible to the Critical objects as unique and permanent was Theory novice, novice, but it enriches enriches it for readreplaced by a sense of their transitoriness ers already familiar with the Frankfurt School’s main theorists and its detractors. and reproducibility. According to Ben jamin, this shift in perception perception reflects reflects a At every step Kang points out Benjamin’s Benjamin’s significant change in the consciousness consciousness of distinctive contributions to understanding the masses. the human impact of media, revealing how Kang points out that for Benjamin, the he influenced more recent media theorists, media’s possibilities are always political in or how his work represented a dissenting character. However, in contrast to other viewpoint vis-a-vis his well-known peers. members of the ‘Frankfurt School’ of Crit- Kang also details the influences of a whole ical Theory, Benjamin saw opportunities array of artists – Baudelaire, Brecht, Kafka, for political rebellion within the media’s Leskov, and Proust – on Benjamin’s thought. mechanisms of ideological propagation. Although Although dense, dense, this book is expertly expertly organized according to four key themes: The work of art can be emancipated emancipated from from the trappings of tradition. So although the the crisis of communication; mediated stodecline of individualised art is greeted with rytelling; technological reproducibility, and a sense of loss, Benjamin also sees liberatthe media city. And in his conclusion Kang ing possibilities in mechanical reproducdraws out the further theoretical implication. The shift to reproducibility reproducibility contains tions of Benjamin’s media critique by comthe promise of bringing the very apparatus paring it with the central doctrine of the Book Reviews
Frankfurt School. For the Frankfurt School’s key members, especially Horkheimer and Adorno, ‘the culture industry’ attains political precedence through its power to induce compliance with dominant dominant social relations: relations: we are cemented into the status quo via mass mass media media and commodity culture. So ubiquitous is the manipulation and control exerted by the culture industry that the communication of authentic experience – that is, experience that hasn’t already been influenced by, or isn’t interpreted interpreted through, through, the mass media – is rendered impossible. The dominant class imposes capitalist culture and mass media as its means of achieving total control of society. The entirety of the cultural arena has been reified , or objectified, such that society is falsely understood to be a monolithic totality. However, for Kang, this theory is too abstract and unitary to be fruitfully applied to an analysis of media culture, primarily because it pictures the media as no more than a tool of ideological domination. domination. Their reductionist reductionist vision of the media led the Frankfurt School theorists to overlook the subversive dimensions of popular culture, and also induced a failure “to grasp the complex material aspects of modern society that are interwoven with various modes of communication technology” (p. 204). This lurches towards obscurity, but, in essence, I think Kang is saying here that Benjamin emphasised not just the content but also the technological and social forms in the manipulation of the masses and dissemination of capitalist ideas. By ‘form’, Benjamin meant not just the stylistic con ventions of a work of art, but the the material mechanisms of production, distribution and consumption. Walter Benjamin and the Media is a masterful overview of Benjamin’s biography, career, and work, in its historical context, as well as his influences, ideas ideas and unique unique contributions to Critical Theory. It shows how Benjamin was able to strike a balance between hailing the revolutionary possibilpossibilities of new media and warning of their totalitarian dangers. © DR TERRI MURRAY 2016
Terri Murray is a graduate of New York University’s Film School. She has taught Film Studies at Hampstead College of Fine Arts & Humanities Humanities in London London since 2002, and is author of Feminist Film Studies (2007). • Walter Benjamin Benjamin and the the Media: The The Spectacle of Modernity, by Jaeho Kang, Polity Press, 2014, £15.99 pb, 196pp, ISBN: 0745645216 0745645216
April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 51
T
allis in
W onderland o nderland
P’ Word The ‘‘P’ The Raymond Tallis asks, does it matter if philosophy does not make progress?
Kant, Frege, and Russell have taken us no thing thing to build on. In the history of physic s further on the road to truth? Or shall we from Archimedes to Galileo to Galileo to Newton to conclude that solving problems – or even Einstein, important truths survive successuc cessive revolutions in thought. Einstein did not exposing them as pseudo-problems pseudo-problems and disprove the idea of the measurement of the dissolving them dissolving them in true Wittgensteinian volume volume of irregular irregular objects by displacement fashion – is not the not the ultimate or the primary hat the arts do not progress in the of water that prompted Archimedes t o leap aim of philosophy? way that the the sciences progress progress phal bath. Chalmers argues that seeing philosoout of his apocry phal does not seem to worry us. We phy as a search for answers to probIn short, there is cumuladon’t wring our hands because the latest tive gain in the power lems is “overly scientistic.” (After Nobel-prize-winning Nobel-prize-winning poet or dramatist of science to explain all, once they are open to empiricannot hold a candle to Shakespeare. A and predict phecal investigation there is a tencontemporary scientist who had not nomena, which is dency for problems to migrate to moved beyond Galileo, on the other hand, translated into ever science.) Perhaps, he suggests, it into ever would be an object of ridicule. But But what of more potent techis a quest for something else: philosophy? Does it progress, and if it nology. There is no “understanding, “understanding, clarity, enlightendoesn’t, should we dismiss it as a cognitive such apparent cumulament.” This would certainly correDavid relic – an ox cart in the age of the jet plane? tive gain in philosophical philosophical spond to the goal of philosophy Chalmers explanations. described by Peter Strawson in Skepticism Philosophy versus Science and Naturalism – Some Varieties (1985), Varieties (1985), of The co contrast with mathematics is David Chalmers, best known for his even more striking. As Chalmers Chal mers points out, getting “a clear view of our concepts and work in the philosophy of mind, addresses their place in our lives” and establishing of the twenty-three mathematical problems this question in an illuminating recent arti- that David Hilbert proposed in 1900, there “the connections between the major struccle, ‘Why Isn’t There More Progress in is universal universal consensus on the solution to ten tural features or elements of our concepPhilosophy?’ in Phil in Philosoph , 90 (1), Jan 2015. of them, and partial consens consensus us on another tual scheme.” This is more ambitious and osophyy One marker of progress, he argues, interesting than philosophy as pre-scienseven. None of the problems in Bertrand would be convergence to a consensus on on Russell’s 1912 The Problems of Philosophy has tific problem-solving, or even as primitive answers to the Big Questions. By this criscience carried out from an armchair. And come close to this level of consensus. terion, things don’t look good. Take There are of course course areas in the sciit captures something central to the tradiChalmers’ own area of interest: the philos- ences w here here progress seems to have tional philosophical enterprise: stepping ophy of mind. According to a survey he stalled; for example, the reconciliation r econciliation of back from, and reflecting upon, our ways quotes, physicalists, physicalists, who nowadays tend to of speaking and thinking about the world. quantum quantum theory and relativity, explaining believe that consciousness is identical to ife, and making sense of the But it is still not the whole story. Philothe origin of life, l brain activity, and non-physicalists (such as relationship between brain acti vity vity and sophical inquiry also questions, at the most dualists) are still slugging it out, centuries consciousness. consciousness. These, however, are at the fundamental level, our customary ways of after Hobbes and Descartes set those hares cutting edge, behind which there is a masexplaining and understanding what we take running. What is more, even if there had sive body body of solved problems and robust to be real. This includes challenging the natbeen consensus, this wouldn’t mean conknowledge. And, as Peter Pe ter van Inwagen ural sciences when they encroach upon the vergence to the truth. truth. At present present physicalphysicalcu t- traditional preoccupations of the humani(quoted (quoted by Chalmers) points out “The cutism commands a majority opinion, but, as ties, such as metaphysics, and especially ting edge of philosophy philosophy is… pretty much both Chalmers and I believe, it is probably the whole of it.” understanding our own nature. Philosophy wrong. offers an external view of the character and It’s no use philosophers fighting back by scope of scientific understanding. It may Clarifying Philosophy Philosophy pointing out that science, too, is in a state of What conclusion conclusion shall we draw from also contribute to the project of seeing how permanent quarrel with itself, and consenthe contrast between science between science – “the art of the different sciences relate to one another, sus is only temporary. The history of scithe soluble” as Peter Medawar Medawa r called it – and (more importantly) examine the vexed ence is a history of discarded theories. and philosophy, whose clear-up rate o f relationship between the scientific account There is, however, however, a crucial crucial extra extra element element.. problems problems is such that, if it were a police of the world and the way we experience it in Each epoch in science hands down solid force, it would be taken be taken into special meaeveryday life – “the manifest image” of the results to its successors, giving them somesures? Shall we deem that Plato, Descartes, world, world, as Wilfr Wilfrid id Sella Sellars rs calle called d it. it. “decisive arguments in philosophy are rare… decisive arguments for positive views are even rarer, and decisive arguments for positive answers to the big questions are so rare as to be almost nonexistent.” David Chalmers, 2015
T
52 Philosophy Now ● April/May April/May 2016
8 0 0 2 K H S E R E
Z © C I P
S R E M L A H
C
Pinch Yourself
Reflections, both descriptive and critical, on the ‘conceptual schemes’ through which we experience experience the world and indeed view ourselves, are clearly not not to be reduced to problem-solving narrowly construed. So why do problems figure so largely in the history of philosophy? Or why does the the history of of philosophy philosophy seem sometimes to look like a series of doomed attempts to solve problems that were first raised thousands of years ago? What is the point of seemingly insoluble problems? Quite simply, they are a means of pinching ourselves awake. Consider the hoary conundrum of our knowledge of the external world. Philosophers have been concerned that, since all such knowledge is mediated through our bodies, more specifically our senses, we cannot acquire an uncontaminated view of what is ‘out ‘out there’, beyond beyond our senses, senses, beyond ourselves: we cannot even be sure that there is anything out there. Kant described it as a scandal that philosophy had not solved this problem. Martin Heidegger argued that, on the contrary, it was a scandal that proofs of an external world were still being being sought. This This seeming stalemate, however, is not futile. Thinking about what is out there in the most general sense (and about what ‘out there’ might actually mean) highlights some of our most fundamental assumptions about ourselves, our bodies, and the world – Strawson’s ‘conceptual schema’ – to which we might otherwise be asleep. And such waking up is not merely the answer to a question, the passage from a premise to a solution, but the beginning of more questions. Philosophy is, of course, a house with many rooms, and it is misleading to think
K U . O C . N E D D A M S I R H C . W W W
6 1 0 2 N E D D A
M S I R H
C © N O O T R A
C
that there will be a single point to or purpose of ontology, metaphysics, epistemology, formal logic, political philosophy, aesthetics, and meta-ethics. Even so, there are characteristics characteristics common perhaps to all its many preoccupations, disciplines, and subdisciplines, although they are sometimes lost sight of in a thicket of technicalities and footnotes on footnotes. Most important is the aspiration to see matters from the most general viewpoint, least cluttered with unnoticed unnoticed presuppositions, presuppositions, and and – the other side of this – seeking the most fundamental aspects of those matters. These in turn are expressions of a deeper ambition – to look at the world as if from the outside, with unpeeled gaze, to wake out of ordiordinary (that is to say half-asleep) wakefulness. There will be be some overlap with the aim of literature and other arts to acknowledge and celebrate the rich fabric of our lives; but the ache of the philosopher to uncover problems and mysteries strangely hidden in what is merely obvious in the practical business of our lives, and hence to ‘untake’ the taken-for-granted, is a special ache. So the question ‘What is the of point of philosophy when it cannot solve its Big Questions?’ becomes ‘What’s the point of being awake?’ To which the answer is that, if anything is an end in itself – is valuable purely for its own sake – this surely is. It is also important to appreciate that problems may be fruitfully transformed even when they are not solved, and that in the process of transformation all sorts of insights may be gained. The human understanding of universals has been radically altered – enriched and deepened – by the 2,500-year long discussion that Plato set in motion. Each century has its own dialects of thought and takes up the philosophical quest at a different place, even when it is often expressed in addressing a seemingly unchanging curriculum of brainteasers. Each era brings its own mode of awareness to the traditional ‘eternal’ problems, and may turn them into a mirror of its preoccupations and anxieties.
T
allis in
W onderland o nderland Join The Conversa Conversation tion
If – as must be the case – complete selfunderstanding understanding eludes every age, then the fault lies not with philosophy but with our finitude, for which nothing – philosophy, art, or science – offers any cure. Philosophy may sometimes feel like “the imminence of a revelation that never comes” (Jorge Luis Borges’ description of the aesthetic experience). This tension is indirectly reflected in the life of the individual philosopher as well as in the shared history of philosophy. Henri Bergson’s observation in his address to the Fourth International Congress of Philosophy in 1911, is apposite: “a philosopher worthy of the name has never said more than a single thing: and even then it is something he has tried to say, rather than actually said.” Pursuing that single thing is rather like Gustav Mahler’s wonderful wonderful hunt for “that tune” tune” in the course of nine and a half symphonies. Besides, the endeavour to make things clearer for one’s self, to connect ‘this over here’ with ‘that over there’, and to open dormer windows on our parochial consciousness, sciousness, surely qualifies as something intrinsically valuable. If there are grounds for despair, they are not to be found in the intractability of many philosophical problems. Rather they lie in the knowledge that we enter and leave the philosophical conversation at arbitrary points separated by small stretches of time; that our dance with the insoluble that makes the mystery of our existence more visible is so brief. For me, philosophy philosophy began began in 1963 (“between the trial of Lady ChatterChatterley and the Beatles’ first L.P.”) and will end in a few years’ time, or tomorrow. We are fated to enter and leave the deepest and most illuminating conversation humankind has with itself in mid-sentence. For this reason, philosophy’s philosophy’s closeness to its beginning – its lack of progress – is connected with its surpassing value. © PROF. RAYMOND TALLIS 2016
Raymond Raymond Tallis’s Tallis’s latest book book is The Black Mirror: Fragments Fragments of an Obituary Obituary for Life (Atlantic). His website is raymondtallis.com . April/May April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now
53
Fiction
EPIPHANY Kimberley Martinez sees through the unreality of reality, disastrously.
Y
ou know that feeling you sometimes get just before you’re you’re awake? awake? That moment when you’re you’re not not quite quite asleep yet not quite awake, when you suddenly understand every mystery there has ever been, and you think ‘Of course!’ Then as consciousness dawns, the understanding goes as quickly as it came. The fleeting memory fades as you pull yourself out of bed and begin your morning rituals. Perhaps you solemnly regard yourself as you brush your teeth, your reflection staring back at you, urging you to remember. That feeling happened happened to Mr Pepperfield all the time. This morning, for example, precisely two minutes before his alarm sounded, he twitched, slowly opened his eyes and thought, “Yes, yes, of course that’s it!” In the usual course of events, his alarm clock shocked him fully awake and he went unthinking about his day as a very important man in a very important job, dri ving to work in his very important car and spending spending the day being very important, before returning again at the end of the day and becoming the least important person in the household. The household consisted of an elderly cat and Mr Pepperfield, and quite clearly the cat had superiority. Today Today was different. The The feeling did not subside. subside. Mr Pepperfield jumped out of bed, “Of course, of course!” he kept thinking in wonder. He had a sudden urge to cartwheel across the room, and did indeed attempt the feat, rather disgusting the cat in the process. It was in fact a resounding failure, but this did not appear to dampen Mr Pepperfield’s spirits at all. He walked around as if in a daze, occasionally jumping jumping and skipping a little. Looking out of the window he could see the postman approaching. “Do you know it’s nearly impossible to do a cart wheel when you you have a goddamn goddamn knee replacement!” replacement!” he shouted in his excitement as he opened the door. “Umm... Umm... Your letters…” the postman mumbled, thrusting them towards him. “Yes yes, not even remotely important, come in, come in!” Before the postman could protest, Mr Pepperfield had gripped him firmly around the shoulders and guided him in: “Now a cartwheel, if you will!” With surprisingly surprisingly little little resistance resistance (it was that that kind of day) the postman soon obliged, and was tumbling across the floor with a curious curious grace. A few streets away away,, a bus driver, driver, suddenly feeling the loss of a long-dead dog, stopped his bus and wept bitterly. A policeman holding up traffic, realised his hands pro vided a perfect perfect imitation of of God and started to study them, swirling them in front of his face, and causing two minor road accidents. Everywhere people were stopping on the street, or getting out of their cars, or putting down the phone firmly in their offices, suddenly realising the great mysteries and 54 Philosophy Now Now ● April/May April/May 2016
wonder of everything that ever has been, everything everything that is, is, and everything that will be. “Do you realise,” said Mr Pepperfield to the dizzy postman, “that you knocked at my door just because I can conceive of a person such as you?” “I didn’t actually knock, sir,” said the postman, rubbing his head, which was sore from all the tumbling. “A minor point, dear man! But now I choose to conceive of a… hmmm…” hmmm…” He cast around the room, his eyes landing on a old photograph of a trip to the zoo – “a hippopotamus!” he shouted triumphantly, rushing to the window, to watch the hippopotamus make its ponderous way past. The postman felt he should should be more surprised. He was vaguely aware that if this had happened yesterday, he would think he was in a dream. But now he understood dreams better than any kind of reality. Keen to be in on the action, action, he shouted at Mr Pepperfield, Pepperfield, ”I conceive of the most beautiful woman that ever existed!” “ Pah, Pah, how boring!” Mr Pepperfield exclaimed as a busty blonde also went by the conveniently large window. “Is that really your idea of beauty? So clichéd !” !” But conversations such as this were taking place in every home, shop, business and office in the world. The pavements were full as people people rushe rushed d out out of of their their houses houses or or left left their their jobs jobs unattended, in astonishment that they had spent so long doing such pointless things. As they began to realise what they could do, a myriad of strange, wonderful, beautiful things started popping in and out of existence, making the world altogether more interesting, and rather different than it had been the previous evening. “But they don’t exist, do they, these things?” asked the postman in an effort to voice the understanding that had been placed so clearly in the centre of his head: “They don’t exist, and I don’t exist, and it doesn’t really matter. That’s right, isn’t it?” “Of course it’s right!” said Mr Pepperfield, attempting another cartwheel, and this time realising his potential, windmilling across the room unhindered by knee replacements. “And because we don’t exist, we can do anything we want!” “But what if...” mused the postman, effortlessly scaling the walls, “What “What if…?” “Don’t say it!” Mr Pepperfield shouted with alarm from his position in the top corner of the room, seeing the direction of the postman’s thoughts. “What if...” the postman murmured again, “What if the world and us and everything everything in it just just suddenly pops out of existence?” There was silence silence then, because because it did. © KIMBERLEY MARTINEZ 2016
Kimberley Kimberley Martinez Martinez is a social worker worker in Scotland Scotland,, with with a 13-year 13-year-old -old daughter.
Interested in Philosophy but have a degree in another subject? The MLitt in Philosophy is designed for you
The Home of Existential Therapy
Apply now for our MA in Existential Coaching* (face to face) or MSc in Typical and Atypical Development through the Life Life Span* (online) programmes * Validated by Middlesex University
Applications throughout throughout the year
It will provide you with analytic skills and techniques, as well as an in-depth knowledge of analytic philosophy, for instance: You Y ou can can apply apply with an underg undergradua raduate te degree degree in any subject including science, social
glasgow.ac.uk/pgt/philosophymlitt
In partnership with
FOR FURTHER F URTHER INFORMATION Existential Academy 61– 63 Fortune Green Road London NW6 1DR
T 0845 557 7752
|
0207 435 8067 E
[email protected] www.nspc.org.uk
Philosophy No Now w Most App-ealing! There’s now a Philosophy Now app for Apple, Android and Kindle Fire devices. You can download it for free (it includes one free sample issue) then buy a subscription within the app to read the magazine. App subscriptions include a month’s free trial. All our back issues are available for purchase within the app too. Purchased issues can be downloaded to your device for reading without an internet connection. Please see Apple’s App Store, Google Play, or Amazon Appstore for details. (Please note: when you purchase an app subscription you are buying it from Apple, Google or Amazon, and it does not include a Philosophy Now print or website subscription. Similarly, our print and website subscriptions do not include an app subscription. For print/website subscriptions please see p.47 or visit philosophynow.org)
WORLD WOR LD CHANGERS WEL W ELCO COM ME University of Glasgow, charity no: SC004401
THE MAKERS OF OUR MODERN WORLD Who are the people behind the inventions, the discoveries, the did they come to play such a key role in making our modern is popular science book is widely available as a paperback and ebook on Amazon and other online retailers.
