Wednesday - November 23, 2005

A Hegel Translator 


G W F Hegel is widely acknowledged to be one of the most difficult philosophers to read, largely because of his extensive use of highly obscure and technical vocabulary, and his opaque writing style. This term, I've been studying Hegel's Philosophy of Right and have found that a lot of the words used in the current Cambridge translation are either misleading, or are confusing in a modern context, where they are generally used to mean something completely different (e.g. corporation, which we take to mean a company but to Hegel means a professional guild or trade union).

In an attempt to overcome this confusion, I've been keeping a list of some of the worst offenders and the ideas that they seem to be intended to convey, which is reproduced below on the off-chance that it may be of use to other would-be Hegelians. Although this list is by no means exhaustive, it should hopefully give a general introduction to the most important terms, such as the universal-particular-individual dialectic, which features so heavily in Hegel's moral philosophy. In many cases, simply substituting the word (e.g. Idea) with the proposed alternative (e.g. Form) makes for a much clearer reading. In others, it is necessary to reinterpret the text in light of the intended meaning. For example… 
“The concept of this Idea has being only as spirit, as self-knowledge and actuality, because it is the objectivization of itself, the movement through the form of its moments.”

becomes:

“The idea of this Form has existence only as mind, as self-knowledge and its fully developed concept, because it is the objectivization of itself, the movement through the structure of its elements.”

(OK, so the translated version is still pretty hard to understand, but you get the general idea—that's with a small ‘i’, not the Hegelian ‘Idea’, which would of course need to have objective form in order to become fully actual! Sorry, philosophers joke…)

For a more comprehensive guide to Hegel's terminology, see Inwood's A Hegel Dictionary which goes into great (and sometimes mind-numbing) detail about the etymology and interpretation of each term. Yawn…

––––––––

accident: an incidental, inessential or contingent feature of something.

actual: something that is fully realised and developed according to its concept; e.g. unlike a fully grown oak tree, an acorn is not actual, although it is of course real.

concept (Begriff): idea in the normal sense of the word.

content: relating to substance or subject, as opposed to form or structure.

contingent: accidental or could have been otherwise; opposite of necessary.

corporation(s): professional guilds or trades unions.

dialectic: the highest form of rational thought in which the structure of concepts is deduced by reflecting upon how they develop or ‘unfold’ into one another. (The whole of Hegel's philosophy is effectively an ‘unfolding’ of the basic ontological category of being.)

estate(s): the three basic sectors of society: agriculture (the substantial estate), trade and industry (the reflective estate) and the public sector (the universal estate).

Estate(s): the upper and lower houses of the legislature; i.e. parliament. The members of the upper house are drawn from the landed gentry of the substantial estate, whereas the lower house is elected from the corporations representing trade and industry.

existence (Dasein): Being. The Cambridge translation of Hegel's Philosophy of Right misleadingly translates both Existenz and Dasein as ‘existence’, but substituting Dasein with ‘Being’ seems to make for a clearer reading (the capitalisation also helps). This is very remiscent of Plato's discussion of Being in The Republic, which similarly objectifies the quality of Being (a noun), as opposed to the mere fact of existence (as a verb or predicate).

formal: in virtue of its form or structure; i.e. without (or irrespective of) content.

Idea: Form. For Hegel, the Idea is the full realisation of the concept as it exists in reality. Although Form would be a more natural translation, some readers may find this confusing as the meaning is exactly the opposite of Plato's Forms, which are purely abstract entities (and in fact should probably be called Ideas for precisely this reason!).

individual: an indivisible entity whose particular characteristics are a reflection of the universal, and is typically aware of itself of such (i.e. it is fully realised or actual). The individual is a dialectical progression that sublates both of these concepts.

intention: the normal and rationally foreseeable consequences of an action. According to Hegel, we are responsible for our actions in as far as their effects can be known in advance or foreseen, regardless of whether this was part of our original purpose or not.

moment: an element or part.

objective: pertaining to actuality or physical form. Thus, objective spirit is spirit (mind) that has been given physical or some other universally recognisable form.

particular: individual, subjective, specific, as opposed to universal.

person: an individual rights holder. Married couples are treated as honorary persons in the eyes of the law, in addition to comprising the basic family unit.

personality: personhood, i.e. the status of being a legal person or rights holder.

police: the public authority. The law enforcement body is only one part of Hegel's Politzei, which includes all the operational branches of government and the welfare state.

property: material possessions (as opposed to real estate).

purpose: a conscious intention (cf. intention).

ratiocination: deductive reasoning; used in the pejorative sense in relation to the understanding.

right: encompasses rights as they are conventionally understood, what is in accordance with morality, extending into the political sphere. ‘The Philosophy of Right’ could reasonably be translated as ‘moral philosophy’.

sex: gender. In §166, Hegel makes the mistake of equating sex with gender, leading him to pronounce (somewhat rashly) that the women's place is in the home whilst only the man can play an active part in civil society and the sciences. Correcting this by substituting the more appropriate concept of gender brings Hegel back in sync with modern thinking, which allows for the fact that both sexes can play both roles. (Interestingly, this also puts Hegel in favour of gay marriage, but that is beside the point!)

spirit (Geist): mind.

subjective: relating to the person or individual.

sublate (aufheben): to transcend or subsume. This is the crucial moment of Hegel's dialectical process in which two opposing notions are transformed into a higher-level, more powerful concept that incorporates them both, as in the universal-particular-individual (UPI) dialectic.

understanding, the: the faculty of deductive or analytic reasoning. Inherently limited, the understanding is often contrasted with true speculative reasoning, or dialectic.

universal: fundamental, global, applies to all. Contrasts with particular. 

Posted at 04:48 PM       

Thursday - July 07, 2005

Logic and artificial intelligence 


Last week I finished a couple of essays on the apparently unrelated subjects of Bertrand Russell's Theory of Definite Descriptions, regarding the relationship between formal logic and language, and John Searle's Chinese Room Experiment, about whether machines could ever exhibit true understanding or intelligence in the sense that human beings presumably do. Oddly enough, I found making almost almost opposite arguments in each. The first was that purely formal logic is insufficient to capture the richness and meaning of natural language, and the second that a formal system, such as an appropriately programmed computer, could in theory possess the sort of cognitive states that characterise complex self-aware organisms, such as ourselves. The notion of levels of abstraction also crept into both essays, indicating that these subjects may not be as unrelated as I first thought. 
One interest nugget of information that I came across while researching the Searle essay was an article in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy about how computers don't actually follow instructions, which came as something a surprise to me given that I've spent most of the last 20 years programming the damn things on just this assumption. However, after giving the matter some more thought, I realised that the author was right, and that computer programs are merely a way of describing what a machine does, or to put it another way, specifications for a machine, rather than a list of instructions that the machine literally follows in the way that you or I might follow a list of directions.

That computers behave as if they are following a list of instructions is a feature of their construction, but when you submit a program to a computer, you are in fact creating a machine that is configured to perform a particular set of tasks. The actual tasks take place by virtue of electrons whizzing through tiny various wafers of specially prepared metals in a way that can conveniently be described as the machine executing a particular series of instructions, but in reality nothing of the sort actually takes place (unfortunately, even the physical description is just another level of abstraction, as according to quantum mechanics, there's no such thing as ‘an electron’, but you get the basic idea). If the computer was made of cogs and levers, or ping-pong balls and pieces of string, then it would be obvious that any apparent instruction-following behaviour is merely an abstraction of what the machine is actually doing. But somehow, the fact that it all happens by way of invisible forces moving through solid state circuitry makes it all the more plausible that there really is some kind of central processing daemon that ‘interprets’ each instruction and ‘carries out’ what is asked of it. The fact that every introductory textbook or computer programming that you can find says that this is indeed exactly what happens is also somewhat misleading.

This kind of anthropomorphising (my new word for the day) is typical of our way of thinking and interpreting behaviour. Indeed, it forms the foundation of the Turing test, which attempts to replace the question of whether computers could really think with the more manageable one of whether such a machine could fool a normal human being into thinking that they were conversing with another person, when they are in fact talking to a machine. Perhaps in the end there isn't much difference between the two, and I'm definitely finding that the more I go into these questions, the more I begin to question what is really meant by ‘thought’, ‘understanding’, and so on, and in what sense we ourselves posses these characteristics. Perhaps these too are merely convenient labels for particular forms of behaviour or functions of the body that capture a particular level of abstraction (that phrase again) within a complex organic system, but that can in turn be reduced to more fundamental descriptions concerning electrochemical activity in the central nervous system, of which the brain forms just a part. (In evolutionary terms, the brain is actually an outgrowth of the spinal column, and many early vertebrates got along just fine without one!)

Of course, these are all big questions, but so far I have not come across any evidence to suggest that purely man-made artefacts, even formally specified ones, such as digital computers and their programs, could not exhibit exactly the same sorts of behaviour and cognitive states that we humans enjoy. In the end, I think that Searle's Chinese room argument misses the point, and that by taking an oversimplified view of what a computer is and the types of programs it can embody, Searle throws out the baby with the bath water and fails to recognise that even machines could one day reach the level of sophistication required to exhibit complex intentional states, such thinking, knowing and understanding. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing largely depends on our own level of mental development, and whether we are wise enough to know what to do with the new forms of intelligence that we ourselves have created. God knows that we haven't yet learned to look after each other and the other forms of life with which we share the planet, so will introducing yet more forms of artificial life really help? 

Posted at 10:00 PM       

Tuesday - June 28, 2005

Bertrand Russell's theory of old age 


While searching for a picture of Bertrand Russell to put on the cover of an essay I'm writing regarding his theory of definite descriptions, I came across the following image, which made me chuckle:



I love the expression on Russell's face, which just seems to say it all really! 
Needless to say that I didn't use this picture on the front of my essay, although it was tempting… 

Posted at 09:52 AM       

Saturday - June 04, 2005

Philosophy of mind and the nature of consciousness 


The nature of mind, body, and the relationship between the two has been a favourite topic of philosophers for generations. In a previous essay I explored the nature of this relationship and concluded that both mental and physical properties were aspects of a single, integrated reality that combines elements of both. My most recent essay takes this one step further, examining the nature of this reality according to Bertrand Russell's theory of neutral monism (which basically means that everything is made of the same stuff, which is neither mental nor physical). Interestingly, Russell concludes that reality is actually temporal in nature; that is, the universe consists not of objects or things, but of processes or events, and he expands this definition to include both aspects of quantum physics and the nature of mind and consciousness.

This is a fascinating area of philosophy, and one that I am personally very interested in. In the course of writing this essay I had a number of thoughts that have substantially developed my own understanding of such matters, and I have attempted to summarise these below in the remainder of this entry. 
What is consciousness?

The fundamental question that underlies all study of the mind and consciousness is, quite simply, what is it? We talk about consciousness and mental phenomena as if we know exactly what we mean, and in a sense we do, but when we try to define them in a clear and consistent way, it is far from clear that this is in fact the case. Some philosophers maintain that what we call consciousness is merely a bundle of other properties—the ability to remember, be aware of oneself and one's environment, the ability to reason, and so on—that can each be understood separately, but without any one trait or ability corresponding to what we call 'consciousness'. Others suggest that mental phenomena are some kind of property of either minds or matter in the same way that size or extension are properties of physical objects, but again, it is unclear exactly what we should take this to mean. Such properties are sometimes thought to emerge only once an organism has reached a particular level of complexity, but how and why this occurs remains a mystery.

My own thoughts on the matter are that consciousness consists of essentially two things. Firstly, to be conscious of something is to stand in a particular relationship to it. That is, there is a three-way interaction between the object of consciousness, the subject (or observer), and some sort of structured context, such as the environment along with the subject's memories and experience of it. This relationship results in individual or continuous acts of observation, corresponding to what we would normally call thoughts, sensations and perceptions, depending upon what level of consciousness is involved. This three-way division is at the root of all conscious phenomena and leads ultimately to the formation of a distinct ego or self, which is conceived as being separate from or outside the world, looking in. Although this view is ultimately false, as the self is essentially an integrated part of the 'external' world, the distinction is necessary in order to support the functioning of intentional agents that are able to form their own internal representations of various aspects of their environment as a basis for action; i.e. sentient beings. (Here, 'intentional' simply means that the agent's knowledge is directed towards some other aspect of the world, in the sense that it's private knowledge and representation of its environment are about something. In another context, 'aboutness' might be a suitable adjective to substitute.)

This view leads on naturally to the second observation, which is that consciousness is not a thing or a property, it is a process. One of the reasons that it is so hard to analyse consciousness into its component parts is that it has none, or at least none that exist in space. However, it is possible that it can be broken down in time into finer and finer grained processes, until we reach the fundamental constituents of conscious experience. Another way of putting this might be that physical objects are extended in space, but thought is extended in time, and so any analysis of it must account for its temporal nature by analysing it in terms of the processes by which it is generated, which always take a finite amount of time. This is backed up by the intuition that it is impossible to imagine a conscious state that is entirely static or without change, and that the passing of time is fundamental to our experience of the world (even though it may have no objective basis other than as a measure of change, as I have discussed elsewhere). In a sense, life—that is, our conscious state of being—is made of time, and if we remove time from the picture then we are left with a dead and lifeless thing that is the physical body, but without anyone inhabiting it. No wonder, then, that we take time to be objectively real, as our whole existence depends on it.

To summarise: conscious awareness consists of standing in a particular relation to the world in the context of one's prior knowledge and experience, and consciousness itself is essentially a temporal or time-based phenomena. We could say that physical matter and energy exist in the 'vertical dimension' of space, whereas thought and consciousness exist in the 'horizontal dimension' of time. No wonder the two have proved hard to reconcile as they occupy perpendicular aspects of reality, so to speak, and so appear to constitute entirely different worlds which apparently never meet, and yet have a profound and constant affect upon one another. (Please note that I am using a spatial analogy here purely for illustrative purposes—for more reflection on the fact that time is not a dimension, please see here.)

What is reality?

As if the first question wasn't hard enough, we must now consider the even bigger question of what, at its most fundamental level, does reality actually consist? The intuitive answer—at least in the early part of the 21st Century—is that reality consists of matter and energy interacting in accordance with the laws of physics. However, the existence of such laws relies heavily upon the mechanism of causation, i.e. how one thing causes another, and this remains as mysterious to us now as it was to the philosopher David Hume in the mid-1600s. Even worse, our intuitive ideas about the solidity of matter and the 'solar system' model of the atom have given way to the peculiar laws of quantum mechanics and M-theory in which matter consists largely of empty space, and any apparent solidity or extension is due to billions of tiny quantum interactions between fundamental particles, which create the mere perception of apparently solid objects. On a purely physical level, it would seem that what goes to make up matter and energy is as mysterious and poorly understood as what goes to make up minds and consciousness, suggesting that there may be some deeper force at play. (Oh goodie, I hear you cry—I love it when there's a deeper force at play! ;-)

Enter the theory of neutral monism. To put it in a nutshell, Russell's theory of neutral monism—and I should stress that this is one among many such theories; Spinoza, for example, thought that the universe was the manifestation of God or Nature—suggests that the universe consists not of minds or physical stuff, but of events. By this he means certain mathematical relationships that exist between the various 'happenings' (my word, not his) in the universe, but is close enough to our everyday understanding of the term to make it a worthwhile analogy. Accordingly, both mental and physical phenomena are simply manifestations of certain sequences or groups of events, and their properties can be explained purely in these terms. The significance of what Russell is saying here cannot be underestimated. Any substantial object, right down to the level of fundamental particles such as photons and electrons, is merely a series of events that give rise to the perception of a solid object (e.g. photon or electron), even though no such object really exists. In other words, what we think of as 'things' are merely conjunctions of events; or to use John Stuart Mill's expression, they are what creates “the permanent possibility of sensation”.

To deny the primacy of physical matter is not to deny the existence of reality itself. It merely reformulates it in terms of a different underlying substance; in this case events, rather than objects. Similarly, the properties of mind may be seen as arising from the same basic substance, so that thoughts, perceptions and the like are seen as different relations or groupings of the same underlying events. In other words, both physical and mental phenomena are simply different descriptions or aspects of a single, integrated reality, which consists not of things, but of processes. This view resonates both with the discoveries of modern physics (that the supposedly real world is insubstantial and illusory) and neuroscience, which states that consciousness is not a property, but a process, as previously described. Seen in this way, the age old problem of mind and body simply goes away, and any apparently causal interactions between the two are easily explained in terms of changes in the underlying events becoming manifest as changes to the mind and physical body to which they give rise. Mind and matter are not two separate things, but two different aspects of the same underlying reality, and so of course act as an integrated whole, as we would expect from our own experience.

Miscellanea

Having solved the mind-body problem, Bertrand Russell goes on to discuss in greater detail how the various properties and combinations of events give rise to both physical and mental phenomena. I will not go into any of this here—partly because this entry is long enough already, and partly because I don't know enough about it to give an accurate summary anyway—but I did want to throw in a few other odds and ends that I came across while researching the above.

The first was that mental phenomena, as broadly defined, may not be limited to ourselves and other sentient creatures. The view known as panpsychism attributes such qualities in varying degrees to all things, which is something I actually argued for in my earlier essay. It may be that what we experience as thought, awareness and free will are actually possessed by everything, including inanimate objects and fundamental particles, to a tiny but measurable degree. Only by bringing these elements together in the correct arrangement—or perhaps amplifying them through the physical structure of the brain—can higher-order consciousness occur, and if this is so, it would appear that the very laws of the physics are, at a fundamental level, favourable to the emergence of life and self-awareness. This view is obviously open to criticism, but the basic premise is, I think, defensible, and is certainly compatible with the version of neutral monism described above.

The second, rather intriguing possibility is that consciousness itself may not be limited to within the confines of our own skull. If consciousness occurs as a result of the interaction of the various elements described in the initial section above, it effectively amounts the universe reflecting upon and interacting with itself. There is nothing to say that what we regard to as 'our own' consciousness does not extend right out into the external world; in other words, that the processes that make up conscious thought and awareness must take place entirely within our brains. If consciousness consists of a subject and an object, it may be that far from being a passive participant in the process, both subject and object are united in a single event that constitutes what we recognise as thought; i.e. thoughts and their objects may be one and the same thing. Just as the colour blue is as much a part of the object that we call 'the sky', a sensation within the mind of the observer, such as the thought of a nice cup of tea, is as much a property of the physical object as it is of our own consciousness. This takes the idea that human beings and other intelligent creatures use our physical environment to augment and increase our own intelligence one step further. Perhaps that very intelligence is a product of the physical environment acting in concert with self-awareness to produce what we recognise as intelligent behaviour.

Exploring this view in greater detail is well outside the scope of this blog, but it is an interesting thought that consciousness may not be located entirely inside our own heads (if indeed, it is located anywhere at all). The brain may turn out to be an incredibly sophisticated device that generates, harnesses or otherwise hooks into the 'intelligent' nature of the universe itself, and indeed, it may simply be a matter of perspective as to which one of these interpretations is correct. In any case, it is a complex and fascinating question as to how consciousness could possibly arise, and I hope that this brief introduction has given you an insight into some of the ways that philosophers have attempted to deal with the issue over the ages. 

Posted at 12:29 PM       

Friday - June 03, 2005

Evolution, ethics and the morality of vegetarianism 


Some weeks ago, I wrote an essay on the subject of evolutionary ethics in which I found myself arguing that if altruism towards one's own relatives and immediate kin is the root cause of moral behaviour (as appears to be the case) then, by extension, we have a moral responsibility not only towards other people, but towards animals too, and ultimately to all other forms of life. This might strike you as a fairly radical claim, but the logic is hard to resist, and as a result I have decided to substantially cut down on the amount of meat that I eat with a view to becoming completely vegetarian. 
The argument goes something like this:

1. Evolution functions through natural selection at the level of individual genes, or gene complexes, rather than at the individual or group level. (If you are in any doubt about this, I'd recommend reading Richard Dawkins’ excellent The Blind Watchmaker, or the seminal The Selfish Gene, both of which make the point pretty conclusively.)

2. Evolutionary pressures favour the emergence of altruism—i.e. behaviour that benefits others, even though it may be of little benefit or actually detrimental to those who exhibit it—because in the long term this maximises the survival chances of the relevant genes. In other words, if people do nice things, then even though it may ultimately be to their own cost, these generous acts will have helped others to survive and so are beneficial to the species as a whole, and therefore selected for by evolution. In this way, a state of equilibrium between altruistic and selfish genes and/or behaviour in the population at large is reached.

3. Altruism is the source of—and the justification for—morality. This premise may be a little harder to prove, but intuitively at least it would seem that all moral acts involve someone doing something that may not be in their own (short-term) best interests, despite it being the 'right' thing to do. In other words, there is a trade-off between doing what is best for oneself and doing what is best for others or the community as a whole, and such altruism is at the root of what we would call moral behaviour.

4. (And this is the crucial point.) If altruism towards genetically related individuals is the source of human morality then, given our understanding of evolution and genetic science, we are related to all other animals and living things, we have a moral responsibility towards other animals and living things in proportion to how closely we are related to them.

Now, this last point is doing most of the work, so let me break it down a little. It is well known that human being share over 99% of our DNA—that is, the genetic material that provides the instructions for how to make a human being—with chimpanzees, our closest surviving relative. Many of our genes are more or less identical to those found in other mammals, such as cows, and even plants and bacteria share a very large proportion of the same genetic material as a result of having evolved from a common ancestor over a period of billions of years. Evolutionary biology, then, tells us that we have more in common with other living creatures than what differentiates us from them, at least from a genetic point of view.

Secondly, most of us would accept that we have a greater responsibility towards our children and other members of our family than we do towards complete strangers. If a number of people were stranded on a desert island and we had the chance to rescue only a few of them, we would typically choose our own children first, followed by other members of our family, friends*, and only then would we rescue other people that were unrelated or otherwise unknown to us. (We might also choose other children on the basis that they have a longer life ahead of them and are more likely to contribute to the survival of the species. However, the key point is that we make such choices based on the basis of the survival of our genes, even if those genes happen to be located in other people.) This selective aspect of morality is something that is not well catered for by traditional ethical theories, which tend to say that we have the same moral responsibilities towards everybody else, except where special duties or agreements apply, but is easily explained in evolutionary terms as the result of an inbuilt (i.e. previously selected for) disposition towards helping those with whom we are likely to share the largest amount of genetic material. By helping them, we are in a sense helping our own genes to survive, which are merely clones of the same genetic patterns found in other people, such as close family members.

Now, putting these two points together, if we are obligated towards our relatives and others because we share genetic material with them, and we also share a large amount of genetic material with chimpanzees and other animals, then this implies that we also have a moral responsibility towards them, and by extension, towards all other living things. If you accept this argument, then the question is not one of whether we have such moral responsibilities towards animals, but to what extent those responsibilities apply, and how best we can meet them. Because we are more closely related to other mammals, such as monkeys, pigs, cows, etc., it follows that we have a greater responsibility towards them than to other species, such as birds, fish or insects, and still less towards plants and other flora. Nevertheless, we have a distinct and definite moral responsibility towards each and every living species on this planet, which is a very long way way from saying that plants and animals exist entirely for our benefit, and that we should feel free to use and exploit them as we see fit.

Of course, a sceptic might argue that if we have a moral responsibility towards chickens, for example, then we have similar responsibilities towards carrots and other vegetables, and so being a vegetarian is just as unethical as eating meat! However, a more sensible reading would be that we have a greater responsibility towards animals because we have more in common with them, and that, whilst it is true that we have a responsibility towards carrots, we have been blessed with sufficient mental faculties and free will to be able to reach a balance between looking after our own survival and discharging our moral responsibilities to others as best we can. So again, the question is whether it is justifiable to exploit animals for food, given that we know them to be closely related to ourselves and have a similar entitlement to ethical treatment on entirely rational grounds.

My own feeling is that this argument is sound, and that ethics itself should be seen as an evolving and ever changing science (if science is the right word). It stands to reason that a more sophisticated understanding of our evolutionary heritage and place in the world will shed more light on the meaning of right and wrong, and as a result, our practices and customs will inevitably change. The only question is whether you can in good conscience hold such beliefs whilst simultaneously continuing to eat animals, when we know this to be both unnecessary for survival and actually detrimental to the human race as a whole due to the inefficient use of land that could be used to grow crops, etc.—as well as being obviously fatal for the poor creatures involved. At the very least it makes a good case that animal (and plant!) welfare is not just a nicety but a moral duty. However, I am forced to conclude that it is actually unethical to eat meat, and continuing to do so would be immoral, and so have recently committed myself to becoming a full-time vegetarian.

How I am going to achieve this aim in practice is another matter entirely, as I enjoy a good steak, roast chicken or ham sandwich as much as anyone. However, I have so far managed to cut red meat out of my diet entirely, and in accordance with the above order of precedence, have more or less stopped eating any meat that comes from other mammals (primarily pork). The next step will be the most challenging as it means cutting out chicken, which I love, although I am not sure whether I will go as far as to stop eating fish, provided that it comes from sustainably managed organic stock. Similarly, dairy products such as milk, cheese, etc. are OK, provided that they come from organic farms and that the animals have been well treated and allowed to live to the end of their natural lives.

So far, cutting out meat has actually been easier than I imagined, as once I started, I found that I actually wanted to eat less meat. A lot of the other things I've found to replace it (various kinds of vegetables, nuts, and in some cases fish) are actually quite tasty, and although I need to brush up on my vegetarian cookery skills, I can actually imagine myself eating no meat whatsoever for the first time ever. Regardless of whether you agree with the above argument or not, it's certainly worth giving some thought as to whether it is right that supposedly intelligent creatures such as ourselves should kill other animals for food, and if so, under what conditions. We have a responsibility to look after other the creatures with whom we share this world, and that may just be something we need to remind ourselves of once in a while.

––––––––
* Friendship is an interesting case. Given that it's incredibly difficult, and often impossible, to tell whether we are genetically related to another individual, it may be that we treat friends as honorary family members on the grounds that they probably have quite similar genes, which is why we like them in the first place. This makes sense when you think that friends are generally people with whom you instinctively feel that you have something in common with, and as a result, may well share a larger proportion of your genetic and/or cultural traits than other people. (I have omitted the role of cultural or ‘memetic’ transmission in the above discussion for simplicity, but the basic principle is the same.) 

Posted at 06:27 PM       

Friday - May 20, 2005

Philosophy essays (updated 2/6/05) 


I have just published the various philosophy essays I have written over the last six months as HTML pages, accessible via my philosophy home page, and PDF files available via my downloads page. I will be keeping these pages up to date with any new writing, but at the moment (if there is any such thing!), the contents are as follows… 
The Ghost and the Machine follows on from The Union of Mind and Body (see below) to examine Bertrand Russell's theory of 'neutral monism', which suggests that mind and body are simply two different views of the same thing. Taking quantum physics and neuroscience into account, Russell's theory posits events as the basic building block of reality, and gives a comprehensive and—in my view, anyway—convincing answer to the so-called mind-body problem.

McTaggart’s Argument for the Unreality of Time is a discussion of J M E McTaggart's famous argument that our conception of time is based on a fallacy. Although I agree with him, I argue that the problem is even more fundamental, as the idea of an objective ordering of events that is independent of any observer simply contradicts what we know about the physical workings of our universe.

Is Evolutionary Ethics a Viable Metaethical Theory? examines the role of evolutionary theory in providing an empirical grounding for philosophical theories of ethics. Although the two areas have traditionally been seen as addressing separate problems, I argue that only evolution by natural selection is capable of explaining both the source and justification of ethical theory, and as such, has some fairly hefty implications for our understanding of both human and animal ethics.

The Union of Mind and Body examines how it is possible for the mind and body to interact if they are envisaged as two separate substances, as advocated by Descartes. After considering the views of Malebranche (occasionalism) and Leibniz (pre-established harmony), I adopt a position similar to that of Spinoza, who considered mental and physical properties to be two different aspects of the same underlying substance whose nature is beyond what is known to physical science today.

Plato’s Theory of Happiness analyses precisely what Plato means by ‘eudaimonia’—often translated as ‘flourishing’, or simply ‘happiness’—in his most famous work, The Republic, and comes to some interesting conclusions as to what this word really means and how to achieve it. For further discussion, see my previous blog entry on the subject.

Primary and Secondary Qualities discusses the relationship between the so-called primary qualities of extension, movement and numerical quantity, and secondary qualities such as colour, texture, taste, etc. that we ‘impute’ these upon physical objects by means of our senses. Includes an analysis of Descartes, Galileo, Hobbes and Locke's views on the subject.

The Complex Relationship Between the State, the Soul and its Parts in Plato’s Republic looks at some of the issues associated with Plato's analogy between the psyche of the individual and the structure of the state. The ability of this analogy to support a coherent definition of justice—the main theme of The Republic—is considered and, although problematic, it is found to shed a lot of light upon the nature of both institutions, and their mutually dependent and reinforcing nature. 

Posted at 07:05 PM       

Friday - April 15, 2005

Two ways to live forever 


I've been of the opinion for a long time now that much of the world's religions are the result of a small number of highly gifted and insightful people who see things completely differently and try to relate their experiences and beliefs in a way that others can understand. Unfortunately, because our language is hopelessly inadequate to the task, their words become misunderstood, misinterpreted and downright twisted by others through the ages who do not share their insight, until the account is barely recognisable as the practical teaching that was originally intended. Here, I will present two different accounts of how the soul and other non-physical entities can be said to live forever. The accounts are philosophical in nature and so likely to disappoint anyone looking for the secret of eternal life. However, I do think they contain some small grain of truth that might be helpful in understanding what various religious teachings may be getting at, provided that they are interpreted in a figurative rather than a literal sense. 
Ideas as Eternal Forms

The draws upon Plato's well known ‘theory of forms’ (the quotation marks are justified, because Plato himself never actually presented his ideas as a theory – it was instead reconstructed by historians and philosophers from a collection of passages in The Republic and elsewhere). Put simply, Plato's insight was that thoughts and ideas are essentially timeless in that they themselves cannot be created or destroyed. Instead, ideas are instantiated (i.e. made real) by things which partake of them (e.g. a red chair can be said to partake of the idea of ‘chair’ and the colour ‘red’), or thought by conscious beings such as ourselves. Although objects and conscious beings are subject to death and decay, the ideas themselves are not affected by the passage of time, and so can be seen as eternal entities in their own right. To put in another way, it is not the idea of chair that can be destroyed, only individual chairs in which this idea is present. So, whist individual objects and being flicker in and out of existence, ideas – or ‘forms’, as Plato calls them – endure unchanged for all time.

This is a very subtle point, and one that takes a bit of getting your head around. However, if we extend it to people then we can see that you yourself do not die. It is only your body (a physical object) which dies whilst the idea of you (i.e. that thing which makes the you the same person whether you are young or old, even though your body, thoughts and mind may be very different) cannot be killed. It continues to exist in an abstract sense, even after it is no longer present in any living thing, although how and where it does this is rather mysterious (see below). This implies that if it were possible for someone to study your thoughts and ideas so closely so as to be able to put themselves completely in your mindset then they would, in a very real sense, have become you. The idea of you would once more be realised in a physical form, although I should stress that this is purely a theoretical possibility – at least until such time as it is possible to scan your personality, memories and ideas from the state of your brain at the time of death!

This idea of the self existing as something above and beyond the body may seem somewhat implausible to us moderns except to those of religious persuasion, but it is undoubtedly the source of the idea of an eternal soul, and consequently of religious ideas about life after death, reincarnation, and so on. Before writing it off completely, it is worth pondering the nature of the self, which is after all rather mysterious, and whether we can truly reduce our notion of who we are to the state of the brain or body at any particular point in time. It may be that there is nothing truly inherent to the self other than our idea of who we are, which after all is only an idea. Imagine the case of a woman who undergoes total amnesia and genuinely believes herself to be somebody else. Can we really say that she remains the same person even though she has no recollection of who she was before and has assumed a completely different personality, memories, and so on? Maybe we should not be so hasty in dismissing Plato’s theory until we have a better understanding of how our mind and our self are related.

Immortality and Time

The major drawback of the theory of forms is that it is unclear how an idea can exist in itself. Plato seems to envisage the forms (so-called because they are distinct to mere ideas in people's heads, which are again simply instantiations of the forms) as existing independently of the physical world, much in the same was as Christianity envisages God as existing independently of His own creation, or Descartes, who considered the mind to be independent of the body. If we want to avoid this dualistic picture of reality, we must first consider the way in which we experience things across space and time.

Accounting for the existence of the material world had been a great puzzle to philosophers ever since anybody could remember. However, some 200 years ago it was realised that it was all a horrible mistake and that there was in fact no distinction between the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’ worlds that had so puzzled the philosophers of old. According to the new way of thinking, whenever we see an object, we are directly experiencing a part of that object, i.e. its visual aspect. It is not, as had previously been thought by Descartes, Locke and others, that seeing an object gives rise to a corresponding ‘idea’ in the mind of the observer. Rather, it as if we are directly connected to the object by the very act of observation, and so any mental sensation that we experience is also (in part, at least) a result of that connection, and therefore also part of that object. Seen this way, the distinction between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ worlds simply dissolves and is replaced by a more sophisticated understanding of the mechanism of perception and mind as part of a complex interconnected system, rather than standing outside of reality looking in.

We can extend this idea of direct experience to the way in which we experience other things. When I listen to your voice, for example, I am directly experiencing not only your vocal chords, but the words they are expressing, and ultimately the actual thoughts in your mind that led to those words being produced in the first place. It's a strange thought that when you listen to someone speak (or indeed read something they have written, as you are doing just now!), you are directly experiencing their mind, albeit across a gap in time and in space because sound takes time to travel, and text can only be read once it has been written. However, the fun doesn't stop there...

Whenever we experience something, we are also experiencing everything that has gone into making that thing happen. Thus, when I experience your thoughts through the words that you use to express them, I am also experiencing the things that caused you to have those thoughts, even though I have no direct knowledge of what they actually were! Nevertheless, those causes are having an effect on me through your words, whether I recognise them directly or not. Indeed, everything that has had an effect on you can be said to be having an effect on me, to a greater or lesser extent, every time we interact. When we consider the way in which we experience objects and events through time in this way, we can see that the effects of something are in a sense parts of that thing that continue to exist long after the physical object has ceased to be. In other words, objects and ideas, including people, are never truly destroyed. Instead, they continue to exist by way of their effects.

If we accept this definition of effects as being, in some sense, aspects of the objects to which they pertain, then we can conclude that despite the fact that Plato has been dead for 2,500 years, he continues to exist through the effects he has on present reality. The very fact that I can use his name and read his thoughts and ideas in books means that he (Plato, the man) is directly affecting my thoughts and actions at this very moment in time. Combined with the notion that a person, and indeed all ‘real’ things, are no more than ideas in our minds anyway (the theory of forms), then it is true to say that Plato exists, and in some ways much more so than he ever did when he was alive due to the dramatic effect he has had on the course of Western thinking. This, I think, gives us some clue as to what mystics and enlightened beings are referring to when they talk about eternal life and returning back to the source, or Creator, in whatever sense you wish to take that.

Whether you interpret the above arguments as trivial or profound depends to a large extent, I suspect, on how willing you are to put aside the familiar notions of change, existence and the self. I believe that it was precisely this ability to go beyond the confines of conventional thought and language that enabled our great spiritual leaders, such as Buddha, Jesus, and many others to see more deeply into the true nature of things than most of us will ever know. (And if you still think it's a load of old twaddle, then I told you that you wouldn't like it!) 

Posted at 02:07 PM       

Friday - February 25, 2005

Mind surfing and the clash of the Philosopher-Titans 


Yesterday, I had the extremely fortuitous experience of attending a talk by Dr Lucy Allais who was presenting a paper on Kant's transcendental idealism (a subject that I knew nothing about beforehand, but am now extremely interested in). In the first place, I was very pleased that I was actually able to follow most of what she was saying as the talk was not aimed at undergraduate students and was quite technical in places. The experience was much like surfing in that it involved continuously balancing and readjusting your mind in order to stay on top of a huge swell of thought and information that was coming towards you at great speed and sweeping you along. Go too fast and you would fall over the top and the whole argument would come crashing down around your ears. Too slow and you'd be left behind, treading water while everyone else was carried along on the crest of the wave. I have to say that I found the whole thing extremely exhilarating and thoroughly enjoyed both the talk and the ideas (that qualities in objects are a product of the conjunction of real objects and our minds) presented. 
However, the real fun began with the question and answer session. In the room were about eight students (myself plus mainly post-graduate students) and five academic staff from the philosophy department at York. Unfortunately, none of us students were brave enough to raise our hands to ask a question (I was dying to do so, but having no prior experience of Kant and never having been to such a talk before, I decided to hold my tongue and wait to see what other people said). When the staff questions began, it was clear that Dr Allais wasn't going to have such an easy ride of it...

As you might expect, the questions were incredibly detailed and subtle criticisms of the argument that had been presented, comparing the speaker's position with that of other published authors and commentators. There were clearly differences both of substance and interpretation (the whole talk was about the correct reading of Kant — a rather contentious matter, it would seem), and at one point, Dr Tom Stoneham clearly had Dr Allais on the run, resulting in a vigourous but still reasonable friendly exchange of views, which left the good Doctor lost for a decisive answer. She concluded that she would need some more time in order to formulate a proper defence, but felt the criticism did not represent a genuine flaw in her argument. Tom Baldwin was more sympathetic to her views, and in his characteristic jovial grandfatherly way, and formidable intelligence, proceeded to point out where he thought the real weakness in the argument lay (a technique that he later applied to me with considerable success).

All in all, it was an amazing spectacle to see great minds clash on a problem of philosophical interest, and there was something reminiscent of a scene from Greek mythology, or gladiatorial combat to the death. For each blow that was struck, there was a corresponding parry or counter-attack, and you could almost hear the intellectual foundations of the argument creaking and groaning under the strain... Unlike gladiatorial combat, however, the participants retired to the bar afterwards and for a friendly drink, and I later learned that this exchange had been comparatively mild compared to some of the more heated and on occasion finger-pointing debates that had arisen on the views of previous speakers (all in the name of philosophy, of course).

Apart from being a great opportunity to observe professional philosophers at large in their home territory (so to speak), it was also a good chance to talk to some of the staff on an informal level. I had a very interesting conversation with Tom Baldwin about some of my recent thoughts on time, which he gently pointed out were "quite mad", and then proceeded to reduce my arguments to incoherence with a few well placed words. I felt like one of the characters in the Platonic dialogues who is forced to admit that his views don't really make sense when placed under the relentless glare of Socrates' penetrating (but friendly) line of questioning. Even though he had taken apart something I had been working on for months in a matter of minutes, I couldn't help but like the guy as his attitude was one of care and encouragement, rather than attack or derision, even though I had made some fairly basic mistakes in my thinking. (Thankfully, I later realised where I had gone wrong, which has helped me to tighten up my argument and hopefully avoid being tripped up so easily in the future, so all was not lost!)

It's the first time I've managed to make it to the weekly Philosophy Colloquium at York and I found it a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Not quite as good as sex, perhaps, but certainly way out of the league of everyday pastimes such as drinking beer or watching television. Perhaps I can see myself going in for this philosophy lark as a serious career option. After all, when you're standing on the shoulders of giants, the view is so much better. 

Posted at 12:39 PM       

Wednesday - February 23, 2005

Still muesliing over time 


As it turns out, I didn't have muesli for breakfast this morning after all, so it looks like knowledge of the future is even more uncertain than I first thought... 
(If anybody actually got the joke in the title of this entry, please accept my apologies — I just couldn't resist it! ;-) 

Posted at 09:07 PM       

Wednesday - February 23, 2005

The unreality of time and the enfolded past and present 


I've been thinking a lot lately about time and whether it can really be said to exist. Whilst we take the past, present and future to be perfectly normal things that have an existence independent of ourselves (or at least as much as anything else does), it is clear that only one of them is ever actually visible to us. Because we can remember the past and have good reason to suppose that the future will happen, even if we don't know exactly what form it will take, it would appear to make sense to assume that such past and future times exist somewhere 'out there' in an objective sense. However, I think that this belief is mistaken, and that the past and future exist only in as much as they exist within the present which, when all else is said and done, is all that there is. 
There are many philosophical arguments for and against this point of view, also known as presentism, but I would like to explore two particular aspects of the argument. The first is the point that, in one sense of the word at least, to exist is simply to be in the present. We can see this when we think about things coming into existence and ceasing to exist, meaning that they are no longer present. From this, it follows that the past and future cannot exist because, by definition, they are never actually in the present (except in a certain rather obscure sense, as described below). If we take this view about the meaning of existence then we should reject the reality of past and future on purely semantic grounds.

This conclusion is less than convincing because, although it may be incorrect to suppose that the past and future exist 'out there' in some mysterious fourth dimension (the common idea of time being that it is analogous to space, with us moving through it, which explains why things change), it is nevertheless true that aspects of the past and future exist within the present in the form of records, memories, intentions and probabilities. Indeed, the only way that we can know anything about the past is because we can access memories, records and other evidence of it. These traces (or 'time capsules' as Julian Barbour calls them) carry information about past events into the present, making it accessible to us in the here and now, and so giving some kind of present existence to the past.

Another important sense in which the past is present is that the past is what caused the present to be the way that it is. Even though nobody knows how or why the universe began, we can all agree that this event ultimately led to things being the way that they are now, and so in some sense this event is contained in the present by virtue of its consequences, albeit in a highly altered form. We can say that it is true that universe had a beginning because it is possible to know that this is so. Similarly, causal links between the present and future constrain the possibilities for how things will be in the future, suggesting that at the point where the future becomes present, it too will contain what is currently present, which will by then will form part of its past (read this again if it doesn't make sense, or alternatively, this might be a good point to disembark if your plans require that tomorrow really exists!).

At this point I want to draw a distinction between two radically different views of the past and present. The first I will call the dimensional past and future to indicate that they exist separately to now, arranged along a dimension that we call time. An important feature of this model is that each instant of time is an inherently static, unchanging reality, and our impression of change is created by our movement through time (think of a point travelling along a straight line and you get the idea). Indeed, this view is so ingrained in our culture and way of thinking that it's often easy to forget that it is simply an assumption about the way that time operates, as the notions of movement through time and 'moments' pervade our everyday language. Another analogy might be the way that film or television creates the 'illusion' of a moving picture from a series of still images played rapidly one after the other (questions of whether time is quantised or continuous notwithstanding).

The second view of the past and present that I want to present is what I call the enfolded past and future. Here, the idea is that past and future events are only real in so far as they exist within the present. According to this view, the present exists as an ever-changing and dynamic 'now'. It's important to realise that here, unlike the dimensional view, the present is not merely a tiny slice of reality, but is actually all that there is. The past and future are 'enfolded' within the present by means of the traces and potentialities that it contains, and so can be said to have some kind of existence within it, even if that existence is of a rather shadowy and vague nature compared to the view of the dimensional past and present, which exist in exactly the same way as the present moment. Events therefore 'unfold' based on what is happening now to recreate the present in slightly altered form. Things that have happened and that have yet to happen have no independent existence as we can have no knowledge of them except through the present.

This second view leads to some very interesting conclusions about the nature of truth and change. Firstly, we can no longer say that something is true of the past or future, or at least not with the same degree of certainty that we can of the present. As traces of past events decay and change into their consequences, they become in a sense diluted, and so it becomes less certain as to whether that event actually happened or not. Truth about the past is therefore not the same as truth about the present, and this is indicated in ordinary language by our use of tense (I went to the shops, John Lennon was shot, and so on). Note that it is not just our ability to know about the past that is limited in this way, but the very notion of truth itself. Similarly, all knowledge about the future is limited in exactly the same way. We can know with great certainty that certain events are going to happen (I will have muesli for breakfast tomorrow, for example), but others are much less clear (e.g. when and where I will die). This symmetry between past and future truth is an attractive feature of this kind of presentism.

[Digression: I considered and rejected an alternative view in which there simply is no truth about what did or will happen. However, this runs into serious danger of contradiction when we try to make statements about what did or did not happen, e.g. I blinked a particular number of times yesterday, but there is no particular number that matches how many times that I actually blinked. Alternatively: I did not blink any particular number of times yesterday, which is absurd, or there was no yesterday, which is hopelessly sceptical. Hence I conclude that truth about the past is an epistemological rather than metaphysical matter. Many thanks to Tom Baldwin for pointing this out.]

Secondly, the present moment, far from being a frozen, static snapshot of reality is seen as an ever-changing permanent state of 'becoming'. Rather than being an illusion created by our passage through time, change becomes a fundamental feature of reality that is constantly operating upon everything there is. Conversely, it is the idea of the single static moment of time that is illusory, because everything is in a constant state of flux and so even the shortest duration of time would contain at least some slight movement or change. Change and causality, it would seem, are woven into the very fabric of the universe. To revisit the film or television analogy as described by Julian Barbour in his book The End of Time, it is not the illusion of movement that is created by replaying a series of stills in succession, but the reality of movement that is recreated by replaying a series of illusions; in this case, the individual events and moments of time.

In this way, we can reach a definition of what it might mean for an event to be pastly or futurely present, or to put it another way, how the past and future are enfolded within the present. There is a lot more that could be said about this, such as the implications for the way that events unfold, the possibility of free well and non-determinism, and the origin of the ultimate cause of everything: the beginning of the universe. However, this should be sufficient to give some idea of what it might mean to say that time is an illusion, and hopefully give at least some credibility to the idea that the present moment is all that exists, and is the only thing that ever does. 

Posted at 01:10 AM       

Thursday - January 27, 2005

Philosophical philately* 


I seem to be collecting philosophical attitudes. This week I am a presentist, structuralist, deconstructionist, naturalist, non-cognitivist, consequentialist and radical anti-realist. Next week? Well, I no longer believe that next week actually exists, so the question is meaningless! 
(*stamp collecting) 

Posted at 04:29 PM       

Thursday - January 27, 2005

OK, now I get it... 


I think I've finally grasped the point of metaphysics. It's not possible to say anything meaningful about the world without taking a metaphysical attitude. Even concepts of world, meaning and existence imply a certain metaphysical viewpoint (that there is such a thing as the world, what it means to be in it, and so on), and metaphysics itself is an attempt to come up with a consistent and meaningful set of abstractions that we can use as the basis for further discussion and reasoning. A kind of philosophical toolkit, if you will. 
The difficulty comes when we find that all of our concepts about the world come with certain problems and limitations attached, and so the issue becomes one of choosing the ones that best fit the available information and allow us to create the most plausible account of how things really are. This is made even more difficult when even our evaluation of what makes a metaphysical theory 'fit' relies itself upon certain metaphysical attitudes, such as what properties such a theory should have, and which aspects of the world it should account for order to be sufficiently compatible with common sense that we can at least understand it, even if in many ways it runs counter to our everyday thinking.

One could take (I and I am somewhat inclined to do so) the radical view that there is no one theory or set of theories that can alone account for the world. This forces us to adopt different metaphysical assumptions to explain different aspects of reality in a way that makes sense to us, even if the basic conceptual building blocks that we are using are (not to put too fine a point on it) entirely made up.

Nowhere is this more evident than in our notion of truth, which surely means some sort of correspondence to the world, but correspondence with what? The very notion of truth relies upon the notion that we are in some sense separate to the world and so can reflect it correctly or wrongly. But aren't we in and part of the world? Is separating ourselves off in this way really a valid way of thinking, and if so, what can we possibly mean by objective truth? Truth for who? God?

It seems that all of our concepts are in some way relative and rely on certain presuppositions and other more basic ideas, and so on down to the basic premises of logic and language, which cannot be proved one way or the other. Seen in this way, metaphysics is a kind of anthropological study of ideas, from which we can (at best) determine what seems to work or is useful for our explanations but that can say little about how things really are except relative to a particular conceptual framework. And let's face it, without some kind of conceptual framework it is impossible to say anything at all! 

Posted at 04:20 PM       

Saturday - January 22, 2005

Why it is better never to come into existence... or not? 


The topic of my ethics tutorial last week was a paper by David Benetar entitled 'Why It Is Better Never To Come Into Existence' (American Philosophical Quarterly, 1997), which proposes that non-existence is always preferable to existence on the grounds that avoiding future pain is a good thing and avoiding future pleasure it at best neutral. On balance, he argues, it is better never to have come into existence!

This is a very stark view that rejects the commonly held belief that life has some instrinsic value in itself. Although Benetar isn't advocating that we should all rush off and kill ourselves (once you're here, it's OK to carry on as usual), he does argue that bringing children into the world is morally wrong as we do this for our own selfish reasons without considering the viewpoint of the child that is potentially being brought into existence without any choice in the matter. Even if you don't subscribe to the whole of Benetar's analysis (which I don't), it does raise the question of under what conditions is this an ethical thing to do? 
My main objections to Benetar’s argument are as follows.

First Objection: non-existence can have no ethical value

Benetar’s argument is based on an alleged discrepancy between our intuitions regarding the absence of future harms versus future benefits. However, when using the word ‘good’, we must consider good for who? It would be nonsensical to say that non-existence is better for the entity that does not exist (and Benetar does not say this), as non-entities can have no ethical value one way or the other, or any other properties whatsoever. Therefore the only ethical standpoints that can be considered are those of the people that do exist, i.e. the parents, and the viewpoint of the possible child that may be brought into existence by those parents.

The alleged asymmetry between our attitudes to the absence of future harms and benefits can therefore be explained as follows: to bring a suffering child into the world is bad, not only because the child would suffer, but because the parents would be responsible for that suffering. This is a morally negative action. However, not bringing a happy child into the world is not bad because the non-existent child suffers no loss, and the parents have committed no morally reprehensible action. In other words, it is the moral value of the existent parents’ actions that determines our attitude towards the situation, not that of the potentially existent child. This undermines Benetar’s case by removing the justification for the asymmetry between pain and pleasure upon which his argument is based. The asymmetry instead arises from the discrepancy between existence and non-existence, which cannot be treated the same, and our moral evaluation of the parents’ actions.

Second Objection: good and bad are relative, not absolute

Benetar’s matrix of the advantages and disadvantages of existence and non-existence depends upon an absolute interpretation of the terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’. However, if one accepts that good is the opposite of bad such that the two form a spectrum of possibility ranging from the best, through neutral, to the worst possible outcomes then one must accept that good and bad are in fact relative terms. What is good for one person may be bad for another. It could be argued that all judgements of good and bad are relative in this way and that ‘good’ is merely shorthand for ‘better than all the available alternatives’, and vice versa for ‘bad’. When we define good and bad in this way then the notion of ‘not bad’ and ‘not good’ give way to ‘relative good’ and ‘relative bad’, respectively.

Whilst it seems intuitive to claim that absence of good is ‘not bad’, it is also true that it is worse than the presence of good. The absence of possible pleasure is therefore a ‘relative bad’, which restores symmetry to the original Benetar matrix by balancing relative goods with relative bads, thus restoring existence to moral neutrality. Benetar’s own objections to this interpretation are refuted by my previous argument.

Third Objection: our intuitions about the value of possible future events are naturally biased

As products of an evolutionary process, our species has undergone natural selection based upon our ability to survive adverse circumstances. This may have programmed us to weigh the disadvantages of possible harm more heavily than the advantages of possible good because this view has a higher survival value in an unpredictable and potentially hostile world. It may be that we are natural born pessimists, inclined to avoid future harm wherever possible, but with a healthy dose of scepticism about potential (rather than actual) goods, especially where investment or sharing of resources is required, such as in the production of offspring. This would explain the apparent discrepancy between our views about the avoidance of harms and benefits as a purely psychological bias. In other words, our intuitions on ethical matters concerning the future may simply be wrong, or at best misleading, in which case not bringing a potentially pleasurable life into existence may in fact be logically and morally wrong, even though we do not normally consider it such due to our natural emotional conditioning.

Fourth Objection: the absence of all possible good does constitute a deprivation

Benetar’s account of pleasure and pain neglects to consider that we are to a large extent architects of our own reality. Even when we cannot change our immediate physical circumstances, we are still capable of determining our own responses to it, and thus have the choice of creating for ourselves a world of happiness or a world of suffering. Beneter’s argument considers the ethical value of the presence or absence of pleasure and pain. However, here we are dealing with the possibility of future pleasure and pain, or to put it another way, the chance to create future pleasure and pain. Now, whilst it may be the case that the absence of a particular pleasure is not in itself in a bad thing (although we might experience it as such if we really expect that pleasure to occur), the absence of any possibility of creating pleasure is surely worse than neutral, denying as it does the very possibility of existence itself. This view also explains why we think that whilst someone never having come into existence may not be a bad thing, it would have been bad if we ourselves had never come into existence, because the ability to experience life is a good thing in itself. Such a good cancels out the inevitability that we will experience pain, making existence a positive good and non-existence (where there is no such possibility to create benefit) a morally negative alternative. 

Posted at 02:40 PM       

Tuesday - January 18, 2005

Objects, identity and descriptions 


There are no such things as objects, only descriptions of 'stuff'.

Things do not exist in themselves. They exist in dependence upon our minds. When we say "that is a mountain", this is just notational shorthand for "there is some stuff that fits the description that I call a mountain". 
When we assume that things exist autonomously from their own side, so to speak, we commit a philosophical error that leads to all sort of confusing results, such as multiple objects that simultaneously occupy the same space (consider a bronze statue, for example: is it a lump of bronze, or a statue, or both?). Instead, we can properly say that some stuff exists that fits any of a number of descriptions, whether it be molecules of matter, particular shapes or patterns of relationships, or functional descriptions, such as "chair".

This view seems so simple and obvious that there must be something wrong with it, otherwise it would be more or less universally accepted and I wouldn't have to sit through several hours of metaphysics lectures listening to how multiple objects can or cannot occupy the same physical space! 

Posted at 03:29 PM       

Saturday - January 08, 2005

Was Plato a Buddhist? 


I recently finished writing an essay (which can be found here if you're interested) analysing the nature and meaning of happiness in Plato's Republic. In it I argued that the form of happiness Plato describes has more in common with the Buddhist idea of enlightenment than it does with conventional pleasure or happiness, which is seen as a poor image or shadow of the real thing. (The real thing being true inner harmony and balance achieved through the practice of justice and a form of philosophical meditation). Although I may have overplayed the resemblance, it is an interesting question as to whether Plato and other Greek thinkers before and after him were influenced by the spiritual teachings of the East, or whether they reached the same conclusions independently through their own efforts. 
There are certainly many parallels between Plato's philosophy and ancient Buddhist teachings, including an emphasis upon inner harmony as the means to enlightenment, a dismissal of the everyday causal world as impermanent and illusory, meditation on the eternal and pure essence of things (Plato's so-called 'forms') as a means to increasing wisdom and awareness, as well as a belief in the immortal soul and reincarnation (the Myth of Er). Plato's own teacher, Socrates, was also known to lapse into deep meditative trances from which he could not be roused for hours or even days at a time.

Given that Siddhartha Guatama, the most recent Buddha, was born several hundred years before Plato, it is not inconceivable that both Plato and his contemporaries had access to (or at least anecdotal evidence of) his teachings. Such teachings also form part of a long spiritual tradition, reaching back into antiquity, which Socrates and Plato would have undoubtedly been aware of. In many ways, Plato's Republic seems to be an attempt to explain such ideas through logical deduction and analysis, rather than relying upon the purely subjective personal experience that forms a large part of the Buddhist method. However, I can't help feeling that this is not how Plato himself actually reached his conclusions, as his arguments seem more of a temporary scaffolding surrounding the ideas than the solid foundation upon which they are built. He appears to be trying to relate in words, stories and analogies what amounts to a mystical vision, and in such a way that it will create a similar experience in the minds of those reading it. Indeed, his stated aim is literally 'enlightenment': the turning of the individual towards the light of knowledge, wisdom and good, which is seen as the ultimate source of all human understanding. (The good 'lights up' the intelligible universe in the same way that the sun lights up the physical one.)

Personally, I find that while many of Plato's arguments are unconvincing when taken by themselves, his basic message is fairly sound and very much in tune with what I know of Buddhist teachings. Where Buddha appeals to inner knowledge and personal experience, Plato appeals to the power of the intellect to distinguish truth from falsehood. Where Buddha emphasises the importance of the spiritual path for liberation from suffering, Plato emphasises the practical requirements for good government and individual morality. However, to large extent both appear to be singing from the same hymn sheet, and I can't help thinking that there is a much deeper connection between the two than is generally appreciated. 

Posted at 06:12 PM       

Saturday - January 01, 2005

Induction and giant inflatable pandas 


"Of course, when it comes to arriving at beliefs about the future, we only have the past as our guide. Why do I suppose that the sun will rise tomorrow morning, that next time I turn on a tap water will comes out, and that the next duck I see will quack? Because that's what has always happened up to now.

"But there's no logical contradiction involved in supposing that, although water has come out whenever the tap has been turned on in the past, the same may not happen tomorrow. Perhaps the world will suddenly go crazy, ducks will miaow and the sun will be replaced by a giant inflatable panda. There's no guarantee that such things won't happen." 
— Stephen Law, The Xmas Files 

Posted at 03:20 PM       

Wednesday - December 15, 2004

The Philosophers' Drinking Song 


Raise your glasses please for a full rendition of the philosopher's drinking song, as featured in Monty Python's Flying Circus. Alternatively you can listen to the full audio version here.

Cheers! (Mine's a pint...) 

I...mmanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable,
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table,
David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.

There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach 'ya 'bout the raising of the wrist...
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, after half a pint of shandy was particularly ill,
Plato, they say, could stick it away - half a crate of whisky every day,
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle and Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And René Descartes was a drunken fart: "I drink, therefore I am."

Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed...
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed!

— Monty Python's Flying Circus 

Posted at 05:08 PM       

Sunday - December 12, 2004

The study of being 


I'm slowly coming around to the idea put forward by Martin Heidegger that philosophy is in fact the study of being, or more specifically: the study of what is. It's an innocuous little word that we use all the time, but what do we really mean when we say that something 'is', and are there different forms of being that things can have? It might sound odd, but can you really define what the meaning of 'is' is, or what it means 'to be'? 
Heidegger likens the history of being to a kind of cultural phenomenon that started with the earliest human society and has evolved into our present obsession with technology, which seeks to turn the world into a collection of things that obey and respond to our every demand ('being at hand'). It is certainly true that all of the man-made things in the world owe their being to ideas in our heads, and without those ideas, or people to think them, they become fairly meaningless. Even natural phenomena such as the sky, plants or colour seem to owe at least their names and definitions to ideas and sensations in the mind. In what sense is sky a real thing? Where does it start and stop, and what is it made of?

Aside from physical objects, we also take intangible ideas such as beauty, freedom and justice to have some kind of existence in real or imagined things. Again, what exactly are beauty and freedom? Where do they come from and what kind of things are they?

It is telling that the common name for homo sapiens is 'human being' and not 'human doing' or res cogitans (thinking thing) as Descartes might have wished. Used as a noun, 'being' tends to imply intelligence, human or otherwise, but in a different sense all things can be said to 'be' and therefore possess some kind of being. Even inanimate objects have being in the sense that we can perceive and interact with them. Indeed, the very idea of a discrete object only arises because of the apparent stability of physical matter, which allows us to 'impute' or project a recognisable identity onto it via the process of perception.

Even if you don't quite buy into that kind of thinking, philosophy certainly has a responsibility in defining what it means for a thing to be, what kinds of being are possible, and what the meaning of each thing in itself is. By this I mean more than just providing dictionary definitions. I mean investigating the true nature of things, ideas, and so on with a view to reaching a deeper understanding of their meaning and thus improving the quality and effectiveness of our thinking. 

Posted at 03:15 PM       

Friday - December 10, 2004

You can't do anything with philosophy... 


"It is absolutely correct and proper to say that 'You can't do anything with philosophy.' It is only wrong to suppose that this is the last word on philosophy. For the rejoinder imposes itself: granted that we cannot do anything with philosophy, might not philosophy, if we concern ourselves with it, do something with us?" 
— Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics 

Posted at 04:55 PM       

Sunday - May 02, 2004

What is philosophy? 


My take on what philosophy (not to be confused with psychology) is all about, and why I think it's relevant to everyday life. 
The second question people ask (or at least think even if they don't actually come out and say it) is what the hell is philosophy any way? It's a good question, and one philosophers have been debating for several thousand years now, with mixed results, it has to be said.

In a nutshell, philosophy is the study of ideas through the application of logic and reason. It's commonly confused with psychology because of its links with the mind, but whereas psychology studies the mind itself, along with patterns of human and animal behaviour, philosophy studies the concepts that we hold in our minds, i.e. the thoughts, ideas and structures created by language.

I always feel it's more than a little unfair that philosophy is seen as an obscure and (dare I say it) irrelevant subject as it really underpins our entire understanding of the world and our place in it. Most of modern science, and indeed most other forms of intellectual endeavour, have their roots in philosophy are were once part of it, even if only in ancient times. As these areas became better understood and developed into disciplines in their own right, philosophy was left to grapple with the 'hard problems' of consciousness, ethics and knowledge that are considered to be too complex or intangible for our current scientific understanding to deal with.

No doubt some of these questions will be answered in time, but until then philosophy serves both as a testing ground for some of our most fundamental ideas about the world and ourselves, and as a way of sharpening up our thinking to address other problems that require analysis, understanding and synthesis of many different aspects in order to reach a deeper understanding of what 'is'.

I also believe that philosophy has a major role to play both as an interpreter of science and in replacing religion, which has been in decline (in the West at least) throughout most of the 20th century. Many of the great discoveries of the last 100 years have left scientists, not to mention the rest of us, wondering what on Earth it all means, evolutionary theory and quantum physics being just two examples. Combined with the vacuum created by the decline of organised religion, this has lead to the cult of the individual and free market economics, which for most is little better than the sterile logic of the sciences. Surely what is needed is a way to increase the level of awareness, understanding and rational thought whilst holding onto our most deeply held principles? This has pretty much been the aim of philosophical study throughout the ages, a word whose Greek root means, literally, 'love of wisdom'.

So many ideas that are central our thinking and language can be traced back to their origins in philosophy, and it is part of the beauty of the subject that it (along with the rest of the world) is constantly evolving and changing as our understanding improves. However, its true purpose is highlighted by St Augustine, one of the great philosophers of his time, when he says:

"Man has no reason to philosophise except with a view to his own happiness."

And (provided that, of course, 'man' and 'his own' are used in their politically correct, non-sexist and non-individualistic sense), Amen to that! 

Posted at 12:08 PM       

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