• Author / Uploaded
• José Augusto Siles Ramírez

Citation preview

ISSUE 113 APRIL / MAY 2016

UK £3.75 USA $7.99 CANADA $8.99

PhilosophyNow a magazine of ideas

Tegmark Is the universe made of mathematics? Intoxicating ideas Philosophy, drugs and cocktails Adamson Meat is Murder

independent thinking

Enter the disc ount ccode ode NEWRE ALISM Enter discount NEWREALISM aatt the check out!* checkout!*

20% OFF

www.bloomsbury.com

introduction to

from polity

new rrea ealism

politybooks.com

by Maurizio Ferraris

9781472595942 | Dec 2014 £14.99 | $24.95 | PB

 

 
 




 
   
  


   
     ("%!!(# ("%!!(# *$'#%!%("%$! *$'#%!%("%$! !(# !(# *&%$, *&%$, 1 %#$!( %!   %%!( %! ***.!!$(#+.!%!#)429!%$&%. $!( %$)( &33-68"/ 052% ( 4237.

@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 0800 243407 politybooks.com

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

See our E-Books at press.princeton.edu

Philosophy Now

4 Keeping It Real Rick Lewis 5 News in Brief

NEW REALISM

Baker, Anja Steinbauer

BY

Book Reviews Editor Teresa Britton Film Editor Thomas Wartenberg Marketing Manager Sue Roberts Administration Ewa Stacey, Katy Baker Advertising Team

WATER

Editor-in-Chief Rick Lewis Guest Editor Manuel Carta Editors Anja Steinbauer, Grant Bartley Digital Editor Bora Dogan Graphic Design Grant Bartley, Katy

EDITORIAL & NEWS

Jay Sanders, Ellen Stevens [email protected] UK Editorial Board

Rick Lewis, Anja Steinbauer, Bora Dogan, Grant Bartley US Editorial Board

6 Interview: Markus Gabriel Anja Steinbauer asks him ‘why the world does not exist’ 11 Interview: Maurizio Ferraris Manuel Carta gets real with this modern metaphysician 14 Introduction to Introduction to New Realism Fintan Neylan explains Ferraris’s New Realism in more depth 17 Interview: Sarah De Sanctis Manuel Carta gets a translator’s take on philosophy

GUISEPPE ARCIMBOLDO

Philosophy Now, 43a Jerningham Road, Telegraph Hill, London SE14 5NQ United Kingdom Tel. 020 7639 7314 [email protected] philosophynow.org

New Realism 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 Britton (Eastern Illinois Univ.) Contributing Editors

Alexander Razin (Moscow State 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 Carey, Prof. Walter SinnottArmstrong, Prof. Harvey Siegel Cover Image The Librarian, Arcimboldo Printed by Graspo CZ, a.s., Pod Sternberkem 324, 76302 Zlin, Czech Republic UK newstrade distribution through: Comag Specialist Division, Tavistock Works, Tavistock Rd, West Drayton, Middlesex UB7 7QX Tel. 01895 433800

Socrates & Zen Meditate on this. Page 34

The opinions expressed in this 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 Elizabeth Hemsley considers the ethics of a new genetic technique 22 On Moral Arguments Against Recreational Drug Use Rob Lovering spot tests the arguments 27 On the Philosophy of Conservatism Musa al-Gharbi briefs us on various species of conservative 28 Philosophy & Cocktails Robin Small concocts a charming cocktail of cogitations 32 The Universe Is Made Of 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: American Psycho Matthew Gildersleeve psychoanalyses one American psycho philosophically, using the theories of Jacques Lacan 48 Book: Anxiety by Jacques Lacan reviewed by Peter Caws 50 Book: Walter Benjamin and the Media by Jaeho Kang reviewed by Terri Murray

REGULARS

Australian newstrade distribution: Gordon & Gotch pty Level 2, 9 Rodborough Road French’s Forest, NSW 2086 Tel. 02 9972 8800

ISSN 0961-5970

GENERAL ARTICLES

REVIEWS

U.S. & Canadian bookstores through: Disticor Magazine Distribution Services 695 Westney Road S., Unit 14, Ajax, Ontario L1S 6M9 Tel. (905) 619 6565

Philosophy Now is published by Anja Publications Ltd

ISSUE 113 Apr/May 2016

Intoxicating Thinking Drugs p.22, Cocktails, p.28

25 Brief Lives: Pierre Hadot Thomas Dylan Daniel on philosophy and life á la Français 31 Philosophy Then: Meat is Murder Peter Adamson chews over ancient Indian vegetarianism 37 Question of the Month: What’s Your Best Advice/Wisdom? You’re well advised to read readers’ answers to this question 40 Letters to the Editor 52 Tallis in Wonderland: The ‘P’ Word Raymond Tallis wonders if philosophy is about making progress

FICTION 54 Epiphany Kimberley Martinez’s hero has one, momentarily April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 3

Editorial Keeping It Real

H

ere at Philosophy 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 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, we have previously published articles on 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 happy coincidence – no, away with this false modesty, it was through hard work and bold planning! – the current issue features illuminating interviews with both of these influential contemporary 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 Empire goes that it wasn’t Holy and it 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 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, 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 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 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 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, currency, countries? In the online world, in social media and 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 on!

• Umberto Eco, novelist and philosopher, dies at 84 • Virtue in Virtual Reality • Universe “full of bubbles” • News reports by Anja Steinbauer. Umberto Eco (5 Jan 1932 – 19 Feb 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, 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 Foucault’s 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 1970, are 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 Vilenkin, 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 multiverse, which can decay to a vacuum. The decaying regions constitute sub-universes which are causally independent of 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 yet know the moral effects and long-term psychological effects of continual immersion in a virtual world. He frets that repeated immersive experience of violent acts, for instance, may traumatise individuals or make them more likely to commit similar acts in real life. Therefore in an article in the journal Frontiers in Robotics and AI, he and Michael Madary 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 Nature 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 data on 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 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 best known intellectuals, 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, is looking 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 – 7 Feb 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 and rector of Panteion University in Athens, before becoming Minister of National Education and Religious 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 2016 ● Philosophy Now 5

New Realism I’m talking with Markus Gabriel, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bonn, in particular about his new book Why The World Does Not Exist. But first tell us a little about your background. How did you get interested in philosophy in the first place? At some point in school I felt 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. 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 afterwards I read Schopenhauer, and then I thought for a while that I had finally understood what I had read before. So then you decided to study philosophy? Yes. When I was about fifteen or sixteen I decided to become a philosophy professor! I said to myself that’s the only viable career 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, the topics Kant raised seem to 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 a particular tradition, in terms of the analytic/continental split, or perhaps even something more specific? I think I just think of myself as doing

6 Philosophy Now

●

April/May 2016

what philosophers have done under 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 want to go beyond philosophy like Nietzsche or Heidegger wanted to, so in that sense too I just adhere to the tradition of philosophy. I think 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. So philosophy in your sense is not one thing, but could 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, 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, 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 immediate grasp of how things really are. Your new book is called Why The 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 everybody? Why should philosophers read it? Why should everybody else too? What is it meant to do? Well it’s really a book for 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, 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 co-defined with Maurizio Ferraris, is that right? So what’s that all about? What’s new is that I define New Realism as a combination of two tenets. Tenet one: we can grasp things in themselves. That’s the sense that philosophers 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 realism without a single reality. That’s what I think is 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. I 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 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 did. So philosophy is also kind of a historical process. Why is it so important to you to claim that the world doesn’t exist? You seem to be saying that at no time can we actually 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 I doubt that we can actually conceptualise 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. 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’re almost done, and then 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 soon you will realize that you have always been reducing entities whilst you were trying to construct a coherent single world picture. There’s always a 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? Well it does precisely not exist – which is why I start the book with a certain analysis 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 think things exist somewhere. In the series 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 up by the Romans – means ‘to stand out’. ‘Existere’ 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. But now you think ‘Wow, so there must be a location for everything.’ But what is the location? Some people would say the universe. But what’s the universe? By ‘universe’ I refer to the object domain under investigation by our best natural scientific practices. But science doesn’t investigate why Van Gogh was a better painter than me, or why Goethe is a better writer than Heidegger. Those are just not objects of science. Let’s talk more about metaphysics. You address both monism and dualism, and you align yourself with pluralism, which is a position that’s not really taken by many, and hasn’t been since its great champion Leibniz [1646April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 7

New Realism 1716]. So tell us more about how that works. First, could you just say what pluralism is? 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 substantial 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 is Spinoza’s idea, and Descartes’ idea of substance too, maybe. A dualist such as Descartes would further say, “Well, yes, what exists is substance, but there are two kinds of substances.” That’s usually what is meant by ‘dualism’ 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, is for her to be subject to the German constitution, et 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’ would be defined as...? Well that can be tricky. But certainly I don’t think that all domains are sets. That’s a technical issue, but roughly, elements of sets in the mathematically precise sense are not artworks or chancellors. They turn into elements for sets only if we abstract away from their 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 Philosophy Now

●

April/May 2016

‘field of sense’. By a field of sense I mean objects appearing under conditions that we can make exclusive through rules. 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 under which an object 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, what are the implications for personal identity? That’s a wonderful question! I think 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 is, “How can Angela Merkel 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 there are 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 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, and the leaving behind of absolutes and commitments to unified ideas? There are very many 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 a huge, major difference. That’s kind of the red thread that runs through everything? 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 – 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 argue that sense experience is not subjective. This is kind of surprising because it always seems that my senses are my senses. You also state that our idea of sense experience is 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 where I am, things would roughly look to you the way they look to me. Many things would be different because we are different – Well, we don’t know. Well, I think we do know. I think there are objective optical facts about how things look. Perspectives per se for instance, are objective – we can describe the laws. 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 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 looking through afterimages onto a material world. But I think after-images are incredibly rare. Even though after-images do take place, most of what I see right now is there, in exactly 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 arranged in non-perspectival ways, as if Euclidean 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, 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 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 bring perspectives into a world that doesn’t have perspectives, I sample perspectives that are already there. As the philosopher Mark Johnston has put it, “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’t see, and I can’t even 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 not the Moon, I can cover it up with my hand. 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 to be to the Moon so 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 Moon seen from here is 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 instruments detect them, et cetera. So it is 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 this another way. I think the 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 we make if we look at us in a certain way. Let me give you an example. There’s this wonderful discussion between 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, what he calls a ‘relational view’ of experience. Here a sense experience, 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’ on an eye chart better than others, 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 called ‘subjective’ is actually 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’ might be less or more distorted than someone else’s ‘A’. If anything is subjective about my ‘A’, there will be something subjective about anybody’s ‘A’. Hence we lose the idea of an objective ‘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.

NEW VISION

GRAPHIC

© VADIM DOZMOROV 2016. PLEASE

VISIT VADIM.CREVADO.COM

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, meaning, ‘to be perceived by the senses’, and on the 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 artworks, 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 interested in the beautiful and the sublime because he thinks that judgments which contain ‘It’s beautiful’ or ‘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 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 Philosophy Now

●

April/May 2016

the thing. Artworks are there to be seen, to be heard, to be eaten etc. 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 are. But they 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 what objects are”; ‘No, 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 actual interpretation of the object.” So come to a museum with me, and then the question will be who 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 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. 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 enough. Where does this leave truth? Truth is quite 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 assertions 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 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, 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 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? Then reality 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 shouldn’t model our philosophy along the lines of how things would be if everything we believed was false, because we cannot even make 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.

Interview

New Realism Professor Ferraris, are there any keywords 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 interview; a summer storm; the ant that runs across my table. Obviously, epistemology (what we know about what there is) speaks of ‘interviews’, ‘storms’, ‘ants’, using words and concepts that designate classes of things; but the classes to which these words refer do not exist except in thought. Unamendability. The fact that individuals 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. Invitation. Unamendability describes 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 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 to speak, embedded in the individual screwdriver, opens up a possible world, and, in the last case, even serious moral and legal 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 people, and interacting too. This is proven by the fact that we can interact with 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. 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. 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 opposite of that proposed by constructivists, which is that a consciousness 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 us. But least of all does verifying reality mean accepting 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 2016 ● Philosophy Now 11

Maurizio Ferraris by Gail Campbell (2016)

12 Philosophy Now ● April/May 2016

Interview

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. 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 philosopher? Certainly. If I had to summarize my own 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, to escape the Stalinist censure dominant in the Ecole Normale Supérieure. By contrast, I have tried to write as clearly as possible. Derrida had dazzling insights, for example that writing has a transcendental role, but then he compromised the originality of this discovery by saying that “there is nothing outside the text”, which went along with the mainstream of the time (“Language is the house of being” [Heidegger] and so forth). I have narrowed the scope of his claim about writing to its own space, arguing instead that there is nothing social outside the text. I’ve developed a social ontology based on documents – written and otherwise recorded, as Derrida had anticipated. Derrida based all his later philosophy on the role of otherness – of what resists the subject and his thought, and surprises the subject. I have formulated realism as the doctrine that ‘to exist is to resist’, with an appeal to individuality that is very Derridean. It is also linked to the thinking of an author by whom Derrida was secretly much affected: the Danish existentialist Søren Kierkegaard. How do you reply to those who argue New Realism has misinterpreted Nietzsche’s saying that “there are no facts, only interpretations”? The accusation is a worrying sign of confusion. If there are no facts, only interpretations, I don’t see how I can be accused of having misunderstood anything! Conversely, if one believes that I really have misinterpreted this assumption, then it is not true that there are no facts, only interpretations, and Interview

once again it is not clear to me what I’m being accused of. In the section on ‘Negativity’ in your book Introduction to New Realism, you sum up the problem of power in relation to knowledge in the imaginary figure of Foukant, who is Foucault+Kant [see the 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 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.

“

knowledge can also be a form of liberation – the greatest one there is – as well as being the antiauthoritarian principle par excellence.

”

New Realism is a global philosophy, in that it involves the cooperation of thinkers from different countries. Is this a new phenomenon in the cultural landscape, or can you identify similar cases in the history of thought? Plotinus was born in Egypt, wrote in Greek and lived in Italy; Thomas Aquinas was born in Italy and studied and taught in France and Germany; Leibniz was born in Germany and wrote in French. It is only from the nineteenth century that philosophers thought of themselves as national thinkers who wrote in a national language, speaking to their countrymen. That was, I believe, a phenomenon of involution, which also took place precisely at the time when science was going more global. On the other hand, it was a transitory phenomenon, which fortunately is coming to an end. Is New Realism an exclusively academic trend,

or is it relevant outside of university? I hope it is also relevant outside of academia, as was the case with postmodernism, hermeneutics and deconstruction. I’d be very happy if this trend 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, choose oncology over 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 or Nabokov originally spoke languages other than those in which they wrote hasn’t lessened the effectiveness of their work... Conversely, imagine 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.

• Manuel Carta has an MA in Philosophy from the University of Pisa, and is a freelance editor/writer. 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 James commented on the growing 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” (Pragmatism, 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 published lecture series indicates: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. What James determined was new about Pragmatism was not the ideas per se, but that it presented an alternate way to discuss quite ancient ideas, or, rather, a return to them. It is in this spirit of the ‘new’ that we may assess Maurizio Ferraris’s recently published Introduction to New Realism. Here 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

Rudolph II of Hapsburg as Vertumnus by Guiseppe Arcimboldo 1591

14 Philosophy Now ● April/May 2016

cal terms (all will become clear). As the book’s title suggests, it aims to initiate readers into Ferraris’s position, which he tells us has been developing for well over twenty years. He clearly wants to 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, 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 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, 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’ are two philosophical figures, Foukant and Deskant. These are not historical 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 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, 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 reality, what is really going on is only an exertion of power by reigning forces. This suspicion of knowledge is not limited to postmodernity; 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 structure 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 elevate conceptuality, as Kant does 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 enter an age where it is asked “not how things 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 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 itself. He claims knowledge may still point to an independent 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 perceived or not (“ontological reality”) (p.41). Thus 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 two 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 neurophysiology. 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 called ‘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 expectations” (p.39). Unamendability is an aspect of reality that manifests itself in terms of nature’s resistance to the theories we concoct 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 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. 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 it resists being a battery with other metals. These facts are only discoverable by doing science. The worldview offered to us by 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 reducApril/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 15

New Realism tionists hold that if the natural world is real, then the social world must be an illusion. For Ferraris, what is required is a way to hold onto the social world as constructed while still maintaining it as a real, causally effective domain. Through what he calls ‘documentality’, Ferraris 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, holidays, corporations, TV shows, etc. Such objects are fully mind-dependent and cannot exist without people. While at first blush it may seem 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 hundred years ago. 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 a specific social context. This dynamic of artefacts and social objects comes to force 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 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 – 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, just as William James did not want to disregard the 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 social and linguistic acts – what Ferraris calls ‘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, for Ferraris it is 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 in the idea that it is documentality that makes us 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 as a whole aims to fully equip a reader unfamiliar with the current wave of speculative and realist philosophical 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 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 Neylan is a PhD candidate in the Department of 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 ● 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: 978-1-47259-594-2

New Realism

SARAH DE SANCTIS Your education was mainly focused on literature. How did you discover philosophy? To be honest, my training in 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. 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 Cazzaniga. It’s been incredibly hard and challenging, but worth it! Do you feel like an academic philosopher? If not, what do you think about academia? That’s a tricky question. I do not consider myself an academic, even though I work in 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 universities – Harvard and the like. Shmoop addresses great works of literature in a witty and funny language, in a way that’s 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 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 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 to what I was just saying, namely my very personal 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 for. It incorporates postmodernism’s ideas and styles, but wants to move forward and recover more down-to-earth and sincere topics.

Hence it deals with lived reality rather than responses to culture, with objects rather than thought, and so forth. David Foster Wallace’s work seems to be the 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 be “morally passionate, and passionately moral.” Foster Wallace utterly scorned metanarrativity – writing which references itself within a piece of fiction, and which is the postmodern literary trope par excellence – seeing literature as a “living transaction between humans” and not as a playground for metanarrative show-offs. He still did not reject 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 us which Italian philosophers are most worth knowing? Well, apart 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 Art for the 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 from the University of Pisa. 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 What Mitochondrial Donation Involves allow for a procedure called mitochondrial donation was As I said, the purpose of mitochondrial donation is to preceded by vigorous debate, as is usual in bioethical issues. replace the defective mitochondria of a mother with the The procedure was lauded by some as a triumph for scientific healthy mitochondria of a donor. There are two methods for progress, while for others, it has raised the spectre of genetic achieving this. The first is pronuclear transfer (or ‘embryo repair’, engineering and so-called ‘designer babies’. to give it its media-friendlier designation). In this method, two The case in favour of the procedure is easily expressed. Mitoeggs – one from a prospective mother who knows she is at chondria, which exist in almost all cells in the body, risk of passing on defective mitochondria, and one are the biological mechanisms in cells responfrom a donor with healthy mitochondria – are sible for converting food into energy. If separately fertilised, creating two embryos. mitochondria are defective, they are The mother’s egg is fertilised with the sperm unable to provide sufficient energy for of the intended father, as in IVF; the cells to function. The impacts of this donor’s egg can be fertilised with donor are different depending on which sperm. The result is one fertilised egg cells are affected, but they can with the genetic inheritance of both include blindness, deafness, heart, prospective parents, including the liver, or kidney disease, and other mother’s defective mitochondria, and one severe forms of impairment. fertilised egg with the genetic inheritance Defective mitochondria are passed of two donors, including healthy mitochonfrom mothers to their children, and dria. The aim of the procedure is to produce a woman who has defective mitochonan embryo which has the genetic inheritance of dria cannot guarantee that her children 8- Cell Embryo, the prospective parents and has healthy mitochonwill be free from these diseases and their 3 days after fertilisation dria. So a switch has to take place. This switch is actupotentially devastating effects. Mitochondrial ally performed by removing the nucleus of the donor egg – donation is a procedure carried out on eggs or early a cell’s nucleus is where all of the genetic information deterembryos with defective mitochondria, to give her genetic offmining things like eye and hair colour, innate intelligence and spring healthy mitochondria taken from a donor embryo. athletic prowess is held. The nucleus from the prospective Afterwards, the embryo is implanted back into the womb, parent’s embryo, containing the genetic information to be where it can develop into a baby free from debilitating mitoinherited from them, is then placed inside the donor fertilised chondrial disease. It seems a truism that preventing a child egg. If successful, the outcome is an embryo with the genetic from being born with a potentially life-threatening condition is inheritance of the prospective parents, but the mitochondria of a good, indeed morally necessary, thing, so the case in favour of the donor mother. The alternative method, maternal spindle mitochondrial donation is easily understood. transfer (or ‘egg repair’), follows this approach, but instead of The case against has proven trickier to elucidate. Far from fertilising the eggs before switching the nuclei, it first replaces denying that preventing a child from suffering is morally the nucleus of a donor egg with the nucleus of the prospective required, opponents of mitochondrial donation are engaged in mother’s egg, and then the resulting egg – which now has a complex unpicking of competing moral claims. Their posihealthy mitochondria plus genetic information inherited from tion involves subtle claims about means and ends and moral the prospective mother – is fertilised with the sperm of the status. In today’s culture, where deep philosophical soulprospective father. searching so frequently loses out to populism and rhetoric, there seems to be little media space to fully express these conTwo Common Objections cerns. This has meant that the challenge to explain why mitoOpponents to mitochondrial donation, including voices in chondrial donation seems unethical to some has not been well the Church of England and the Catholic Church, typically met. The philosophical concerns that lie at the heart of objecexpressed their concerns about it via two routes. One questions tions to it have remained ill-defined and obscure. In this artithe ethics of using and destroying embryos; the other chalcle, I want to examine the prominent arguments that have been lenges the safety of mitochondrial donation, and worries about advanced in opposition to mitochondrial donation, and the the unknown ill-effects which could be borne by the recipients, refutations of them provided by its proponents. In doing so, I’ll who were never able to give their consent to it. also explain why none of these arguments really get to the

18 Philosophy Now ● April/May 2016

EMBRYO PIC © DATABSE CENTER FOR LIFE SCIENCE 2013

A

Objection 1: The Moral Status of Embryos The belief by some that the destruction of embryos is always ethically impermissible because life begins at conception provides them grounds for having strong 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 person that was contained within the nucleus of the donor embryo no longer exists. For those who see even recently fertilised eggs as human lives, this is sufficient to make the procedure ethically impermissible. However, this complaint fails as a targeted objection to mitochondrial donation per se, because it ignores the fact that 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. A more socially 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, as I will argue, the attempt to weigh the moral value of a destroyed embryo against the moral value of an adult human life is disingenuous when the adult human life in question would not exist independently of the destroyed embryo. This is not the main ethical issue in this situation. So for those who are not committed to a view of embryos as morally sacrosanct, but who nevertheless want to say that there is something worrying about mitochondrial donation, the idea that fertilised eggs are morally inviolable provides only a straw-man argument, and unanswered concerns remain. Objection 2: Unknown Risks The second common objection to mitochondrial 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 expresses a concern about what the physical 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 legitimacy of the procedure per se. All new medical and scientific discoveries take us into uncharted 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 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 comes closest to explaining the 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 (2007). He argues firstly that one virtue of 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 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 ourApril/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. Replacing the 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, they argue, are purely and straightforwardly 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, 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 would need to 20 Philosophy Now ● 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 the genetic slippery slope than a straightforward concern about what practices an amendment 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 the distinction between an altered and an unaltered embryo, why not also the distinction between altering mitochondrial DNA and altering nuclear DNA? This worry attempts to grasp at something of ethical significance about the precedent the legalisation of mitochondrial 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, mitochondrial donation creates a uniquely problematic scenario not previously encountered, and not yet adequately addressed from an ethical standpoint. ‘Embryo repair’ mitochondrial donation creates two embryos, one of which exists purely as a means of ensuring the 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. To my knowledge, the challenge of how this 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, many have attempted to justify the destruction 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 become their child. But 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.

STLL FROM NEVER LET ME GO © FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES 2010

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 are now getting closer to what is uniquely 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 rather than adopt or 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 provides the justification for assigning a higher moral 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 ever exist as a donor, but which has no moral 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-

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 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 consumerist 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 donor clone: the least of our worries. A still from the movie Never Let Me Go

© ELIZABETH HEMSLEY 2016

Elizabeth is doing a PhD in Political Theory at the University of Hong Kong. She has an MA in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh. • An early expression of the ideas contained in this article appeared in Athena (imagineathena.com), and I am grateful to readers of the magazine for their comments.

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. 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) marijuana. The answer lies not simply in the harm the use of these drugs might cause, but in the perceived immorality of their use. As former U.S. Drug Czar William Bennett once 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 compelling argument” (Drugs: Should We Legalize, Decriminalize or 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 to say 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 rudimen-

22 Philosophy Now ● April/May 2016

tary to the philosophically sophisticated. But the vast majority of these arguments are unsuccessful, and those that succeed are quite limited in scope. Some Rudimentary Arguments Take, for example, one of the philosophically rudimentary arguments: Recreational drug use is generally unhealthy for the user; therefore, recreational drug use is wrong. Now it is true that recreational drug use is generally unhealthy for the user in one respect or another, to one degree or another. 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, the health of the person 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 – or, more broadly, generally harmful – to the one who engages in it renders that activity morally wrong. However, this idea is very difficult to 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, informed consent. From boxing to BASE jumping, 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, informed consent. Imprudent, 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 inducing mental states for depression 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 latter is not. But if the claim, as 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 listening to music or reading a novel, for instance. 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 rudimentary arguments: one grounds the supposed wrongness of recreational drug use in the claim that it squanders the 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. Equivalent analogies can be cited to show why these other arguments don’t work either. More Sophisticated Arguments More philosophically sophisticated arguments for the moral wrongness of certain recreational drug use fare no better. Consider the following argument: By using drugs recreationally, the user instrumentalizes himself; therefore, recreational drug use is wrong. To instrumentalize oneself is to use oneself for a 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 rationally agree to 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 of recreational drug use is. This, in 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, the purpose of using marijuana 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 be proposed here, 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 us to the second question: Is sobriety required 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 understand when they are hurting others and 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 effects – at least up to the point of the incapacity of rational thought. Another philosophically sophisticated argument for the wrongness of recreational drug use is worth 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’. 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: For and 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 what extent a drug is addictive may 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 and 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, if at all: as Brian Penrose writes, “Whatever else may be true of [hallucinogens], they’re more or less universally recognized as non-addictive” (Regulating Vice). 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 is at issue here is the moral status of 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 to be acceptable conduct, under what conditions one will kill another human being, and so on. Even so, it does not seem to be morally wrong to join the 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 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 be sure, the diminishing of 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 that involves the diminishing of one’s capacity to govern oneself will also be wrong, regardless of the means by which this is achieved. To make this clear, suppose that what makes murder morally 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 individual permanently comatose against their will. The means 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 nonetheless – so rendering someone comatose will be wrong for the same reason that murder is wrong. Similarly, if diminishing one’s capacity to govern oneself is morally wrong in and of itself, then joining the military is thereby morally wrong. But this is implausible. There are many other philosophically 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 also be said about each of the arguments above, and I have done just that in my book A 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 Professor of Philosophy at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. His book A Moral Defense of Recreational Drug Use is available from Palgrave Macmillan.

Brief Lives

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 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: “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 to perform a philosophical act, that is to 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 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).

PORTRAIT OF PIERRE HADOT © DARREN MCANDREW 2016

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. He eventually left the priesthood when he disagreed with a Papal encyclical. Hadot translated Marius Victorinus with Father Paul 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 studied contained 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. Hadot was a lecturer at École Pratique des 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. Hadot’s Philosophical Vision From his well-informed vantage point, Hadot published a piece about American philosopher Henry Thoreau in 1994 in French entitled ‘There Are Nowadays Professors of Philosophy, but not Philosophers’. This work April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 25

Brief Lives 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, ‘Behind the Veil – In Memory of 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 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 embrace both analytical methodology and philosophy as a way of life – so long as neither is entirely neglected. Philosophy As A Way Of Life Two of his books that have been translated into English provide us with further metaphilosophical insight into Hadot: Philosophy as a 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, consisting of a deeper account of Hadot’s particular philosophical themes. Philosophy as a Way of Life explains that the goal of history is to structure an account of events from which conclusions can be drawn. In 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 misunderstandings” (Philosophy as a Way of Life, trans. Michael Chase, p.74). 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 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 on similar issues include Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, MacIntyre and Pirsig, to name just a handful; 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 philosophy finds itself becomes clear in What Is Ancient Philosophy?. He frames the discussion within this brief characterization: “Philoposia, for instance, was the pleasure and interest one took in drinking; philotimia was a propensity to acquire honors. Philosophia, therefore, would be the interest one took in wisdom” (trans. Michael Chase, 2002, p.16). 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 present his vision of the importance of remembering 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. This point is easily discovered in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, 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 Century in his work at all. By ignoring those who partook of the analytic style – from Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore to Robert Nozick and John Rawls – Hadot made clear the absolute difference 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 is merely intended to quietly return our focus to the notion that philosophy can be lived as well as spoken of. Though many such efforts were made, no other Twentieth Century philosopher was as effective in this pursuit as Hadot. © THOMAS DYLAN DANIEL 2016

Thomas Dylan Daniel recently graduated from Texas State University with an MA in Applied Philosophy and 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 description, in that conservatives do value tradition – albeit not for 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 feature of conservatism rather than its essence. Conservatism is a response to progressivism. The point of divergence between them relates to the (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. 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. Within communities, people are held to be responsible for, and accountable to, one another, without much need for state interference – typically by upholding traditional values and modes of social organization. Civil rights, civil liberties, and private property, are viewed as essential bulwarks against potential government overreach. The function of the state is not to promote any particular 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 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 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 ‘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; 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 universalized 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 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. 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, and Evengy Morozov. © MUSA AL-GHARBI 2016

Musa al-Gharbi is a cognitive sociologist affiliated with 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 2016 ● Philosophy Now 27

Philosophy &

COCKTAILS

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 of 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 to argue 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 that gives it this 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 – 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 and 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 philosophical writing, the nearest parallel is the aphorism, as practiced by thinkers such as Schopenhauer and, above all, Nietzsche. “Every word is a prejudice” Nietzsche says 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 ● April/May 2016

James Bond drinks a Martini, dirty, in Spectre

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 the cocktail rather than with drinking it – that is, with giving instructions to a bartender, preferably in front 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 begin, it is worth noting that 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 in Paris 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’ Bar, and apricot cocktails at the Bec de Gaz on the Rue Montparnasse: what more could the Ritz Bar have offered us?” (Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life, 1965, p.17, trans. P. Green.)

No more is heard of the mead cocktail, and maybe just as well; but the other speciality she mentions has its 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 spent an evening together at the Bec de Gaz in the Rue Montparnasse. We ordered the speciality of the house, apricot cocktails; Aron said, pointing to his glass, ‘You see, my dear fellow, if you are a phenomenologist, you can

SPECTRE STILL © MGM/COLUMBIA PICTURES 2015

Robin Small will have a Martini – stirred, not shaken.

talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!’ Sartre turned pale with emotion at this. Here was just the thing he had been longing to achieve for years – to describe objects just as he saw and touched them, and extract 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).

Sartre presents his new solution to the central problems of metaphysics in a short essay on intentionality published in 1939, ‘Intentionality: A Fundamental Feature of Husserl’s Phenomenology’. Consciousness is intentional – meaning, it is 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 (1938), this idea of the givenness of the world takes an existential turn when the protagonist Antoine Roquentin experiences his environment as a startlingly immediate presence. He reflects: “To exist is simply to be 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 cocktail, anyway? Hard to 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 is just the sort of thing that tends to give phenomenology a bad name” (Robert Burch in Phenomenology + Pedagogy 9, 1991, p.39). 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 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 projecting that out into the drink (I Drink Therefore I Am, pp.118–119. See also Scruton’s ‘The Philosophy of Wine’ in Barry Smith, ed., Questions of Taste, p.6). 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. 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 tell us, they arise out of a subtle negotiation between ourselves and nature. Hence, making wine is an art that requires lengthy experience and acquired judgement – whereas anyone can make a decent Martini 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 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 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.

SIMON + FINN CARTOON © MELISSA FELDER 2016

PLEASE VISIT SIMONANDFINN.COM

Why Philosophy And The Cocktail Belong Together The artificiality of cocktails is also reflected in their cultural location. They belong in cities, and modern ones at that. Wine 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 examples of philosophical thinking. I’ve already mentioned Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, both of whom prove that wit and wisdom can exist 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 tradition tends to be suspicious of thinking or writing that risks the same accusations of superficiality and irresponsibility directed against the cocktail by wine-drinking critics. But philosophers who have learned to read Nietzsche attentively might be prepared to think again.

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 part of the world is only symbolic. A Mai Tai may make you think of Hawaii, and it’s just possible that it was invented there, but that’s as far as any connection goes. 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 cocktails have no relation to place, so too they have no intrinsic temporality. Wines are usually years old (apart from the wine made by Jesus at the wedding in Cana, and that involved setting aside the laws of nature). Wine lovers are aware of time’s work, and seek out preferred vintages of a given wine. In contrast, a cocktail is typically made just before being consumed. 30 Philosophy Now ● April/May 2016

Clink, Drink & Think Nothing I have said about wine and cocktails is meant to imply that they are in competition for philosophical allegiance. My aim is certainly not to talk up one at the other’s expense. I will even concede that whereas most wines are 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, 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 is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Auckland.

IMAGE BY CAROL BELANGER GRAFTON

Philosophy Then Meat is Murder Peter Adamson contemplates non-violence in ancient Indian thought.

I

n my last column, I talked about the challenges and excitements of tackling ancient Indian philosophy in my History 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 philosophy 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, meaning ‘non-injury’ or ‘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 devoted practitioners, the Jains, ahimsa becomes a comprehensive way of life. The Jains want to avoid 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 of the Buddha whom Jains revere as the 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. 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: 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 sacrifice doesn’t really count as killing and is needed to maintain the balance of the cosmos. This illustrates the difficulty: were these discussions of violence really ethical, or rather disagreements about religious practice? You can argue the point both ways. 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 fetters [i.e. the Jaina monks] avoid the dreadful act of killing” (from Haranandalahari, trans L. Schmithausen, 2000, p.273). And we can find similar passages in Buddhist texts and the Mahabharata. 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, often from a utilitarian point of view. But the Jains, and other ancient Indi-

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 by several facts. For 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 vegetables, which are believed to 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’s not to say that all killing is seen 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, 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 and Buddhists have certainly 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 their primary goal. Rather, much like ancient Greek and Roman virtue theory, the ancient precept of ahimsa was above all about shaping the self. © PROF. PETER ADAMSON 2016

Peter Adamson is the author of A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, Vols 1 & 2, available from OUP. Both are based on his popular History of Philosophy podcast. April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 31

The Universe Is Made Of Mathematics Sam Woolfe recounts the mathematical metaphysics of physicist Max Tegmark.

M

WORLD OF MATHEMATICS © KEN LAIDLAW 2016 PLEASE VISIT WWW.KENLAIDLAW.COM TO SEE MORE OF KEN’S ART

ax Tegmark is a Swedish-American cosmologist currently teaching at MIT. He has made important 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 name, the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis. This hypothesis can be summed up in one phrase: “Our external physical reality is a mathematical structure.” In this case, a ‘mathematical 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 universe. Rather, mathematics itself defines and structures the universe. In other words, the physical universe is mathematics. This is a very strange and bold statement, and at first glance it’s not easy to wrap your head around it, but let’s try.

32 Philosophy Now

●

April/May 2016

Tegmark & Plato The Mathematical Universe 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, Tegmark’s hypothesis argues that mathematical entities such 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 magazine, July 2008). This position is known as mathematical monism. Some may view Tegmark’s mathematical monism as an extreme and nonsensical 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 Universe’ in Foundations of Physics (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 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 of things, Plato claims, can be traced to what he calls Forms or Ideas, which are abstract, timeless, archetypal, 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 Mathematical Universe Hypothesis. It took a while before he got his ideas published in a scientific 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 in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, No.1, 1960), asking why nature is so 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 thinker 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, 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 his book, Science Without Numbers (1980). Field said that mathematics does not correspond to anything real. Instead he 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 exist, whereas there are an infinite number of me in still other universes. Tegmark also writes in his paper ‘Parallel Universes’ in Science and Ultimate Reality (J.D. Barrow, P.C.W. Davies, & C.L. Harper, eds, 2003), that his Ultimate Ensemble/Mathematical Universe Hypothesis encompasses all levels of multiverse, of which he says that there are four types or levels. The first 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 in which some 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 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 the bus. This idea was originally Hugh Everett’s many-worlds 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 number of branches, where every possible quantum event creates a new universe and so signifies the growth of a new branch. Tegmark writes, "The only difference between Level I and Level III is where your doppelgängers reside.” In a Level I concept of the multiverse, my doppelgängers (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 of multiverse is the 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.samwoolfe.com. 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. What was he on about? One answer to this question, ‘searching for definitions’, seems on the face of it utterly inadequate: Socrates was tried and executed because he was searching for definitions! Yet definitions are important. For 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 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 rather, the knowledge he is after must be passionate knowledge. 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 conversed, made him deeply unpopular. He was seen as undermining the very values which Athenians regarded as being hallmarks of their society – even if they could not articulate them. “Of course everyone knows what bravery is, Socrates! Why do you need to confuse everyone by searching for a definition of it?” The Search For Wisdom At the risk of turning Socrates into a closet Buddhist, there are some instructive parallels with that religion, particularly Distant view of Mount Fuji by Keisai Eisen, 1835

34 Philosophy Now ● April/May 2016

with some of the Zen koans or parables, which may help us to understand Socrates’ search for knowledge more clearly. A key element in Socrates’ search 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 watched the overflow until he no longer 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 of those whom Socrates 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 barbs (Meno, 80a). Most of those to whom Socrates talks end 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 which illustrates the 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 achieves enlightenment. Socrates is seeking 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 to know what bravery is but does not act bravely would thereby prove that he does not know what bravery is. The World & Its Temptations One of the ideas Socrates offers in the Apology would 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 master Hakuin was praised by his neighbours as one living a pure life. A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. 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 much harassment at last named Hakuin. In great anger the parents went to the master. “Is that so?” was all he would say. After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time 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 girl-mother could stand it no longer. She 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 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 and Ekido, two monks, were once traveling 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 ● April/May 2016

Tanzan boldly carries the young woman over the mud, but his kind action does not lead to the sort of impure feelings which have presumably dogged Ekido since the encounter. Tanzan is able to put the encounter into perspective, 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 sort of knowledge or wisdom that 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 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 took the young man down to the sea, waded in with him, and then dunked him under the water for thirty seconds. When he let the young man up for air, Socrates asked him to repeat what he wanted. “Knowledge, O great one!” he sputtered. Socrates put him under the water again, only this time a little longer. After repeated dunkings and responses, the philosopher asked, “What do you want?” The young man finally gasped, “Air. I want 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 Socrates wants from those he 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 are no further along the road to the sort of 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, and is an enthusiast of fifth-century BCE Athens, particularly its troublemaking philosopher Socrates. • The Zen stories are taken from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, compiled by Paul Reps at terebess.hu/zen/101ZenStones.pdf

Question of the Month

???

What’s 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 fruit?) and met the 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. If not for our 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 led us also to 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 in their own way. 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 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 astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar said in a tribute to the great scientist Arthur Eddington’s spirit of discovery, “let us see how high we can fly before the sun melts the wax in our wings.” And when we pass on, we leave behind – somewhat like the Cheshire Cat’s surreal grin – the fruits of our wonder. VENKAT RAMANAN PARKINSON, AUSTRALIA

C

onstantly be mindful of your own fallibility. It is generally easy to be aware of the many imperfections 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 apt to escape from the memory than favourable ones.” The roots of error are many. A partial list 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

inescapable engenders a certain humility. Why should it matter? In daily life the consequences of 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, in order to learn, it is necessary to admit ignorance. 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 admission of fallibility need not imply 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 necessarily fundamentally misguided. They may even be right. Although I can’t be sure about that, of course. DAVID BOURN WHICKHAM, NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE

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 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). There is even a dark 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 of wisdom are not incompatible. I think Dale Carnegie advocates both in his book How to win Friends and Influence 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 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. 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. That way you will understand them 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. CHRIS GOULD NORWICH

U

sing the definition of advice as ‘an opinion offered as a 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. The Macquarie Dictionary defines wisdom as having ‘knowledge of what is true or right, coupled with just judgement as to action, sagacity, prudence, or common sense’. In the ancient world, wisdom was also thought of as the type of 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. 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. For example, if I want to know anything about my mobile phone, I ask my gen Y children, not my elderly mother. So this is probably my best advice: Look for wisdom from someone who has demonstrated that they have the sort of knowledge about living well that you seek – someone whose life reflects that knowledge, or who has the education and training that would give them that knowledge. LORIN JOSEPHSON SYDNEY

L

ike Polonius to Laertes in Hamlet, my best advice would be To thine own self be true, for the same reason he gives: “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 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, it is wise to recognise that you should 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 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, have acted in a wise and – of sorts – honourable manner. People will respond accordingly, and probably shun you. But again, such an outcome may act as a catalyst for 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, LANCASHIRE

A

s far as received wisdom, I would quote either Russell or Whitehead (I’m not sure which): “Humble yourself or the world will do it for you.” As concerns the creative act, 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 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 better could we do with what we have been 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, which also underlie all the offerings above: 1. Everything takes its natural course. Even when we intervene, it merely becomes part of that course. 2. Everything must be questioned – including, and most importantly, ourselves. 3. Assumptions are made to be broken. D.E. TARKINGTON BELLEVUE, NEBRASKA

M

y first advice is not to give unsolicited advice. People 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 the freedom (your life is not predetermined) to give meaning to your life. My final advice is to get out there and give your life meaning. But… but… you say – what 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

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 is something that comes only from you. GORDON CONROY PENNANT HILLS, NEW SOUTH WALES

T

he best advice is the positive Golden Rule, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. This entails the negative rule, ‘Do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you’. The positive rule encourages us to do good; the negative, 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. It should be something that one can act on, not just think about. It should be something that improves both the person and society. The Golden Rule does all that. The best advice also addresses the young and provides good enculturation. Young children have basic needs and want immediate 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 rests on the idea that others are fundamentally 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 for me is fair for you. With developing 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, which is essential to civilization. So the best advice to anyone, but especially the young, is practice the Golden Rule. JOHN TALLEY RUTHERFORDTON, NORTH CAROLINA

I

f we want to share some good advice with the world, we need to find something that not only are we deeply convinced of, but which can be useful for people from all walks of life and with different skills and cultural backgrounds. With that in mind, my advice is, write down something about your day, every day. It can be done by pretty much anyone – you don’t need expensive equipment, pencil and paper will suffice. But it’s useful because it will help you have a clearer picture of where your life is going, and will prevent you from 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

??

will give you the chance to preserve your bright ideas and not 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, on your own personality. ENRICO SORRENTIN OXFORD

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 the only mind in an external world that may not exist. Cultivate your transparent gaze. People will expect it when trying to understand if you mean the bizarre things you say: “What do you mean I do not exist?” Have a toothbrush handy. Too much candy will serve your brain well when pondering the origins of 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 sets that do not 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. Else you’ll lose your way in those classics of philosophy. Nowadays we call 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 shoes always 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 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. Philosophy is timeless and thus there is no need for a timetable. Listen to Ludwig, and always greet yourself with a “Take your 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 have been 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 2016 ● Philosophy Now 39

Letters When inspiration strikes, don’t bottle it up! Write to me at: Philosophy Now 43a Jerningham Road • London • SE14 5NQ • U.K. or email [email protected] 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 laws. I’m suggesting that in our brains quantum effects may not be entirely random. I mean, although observation yields random results, choice 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 think that the power of will operates through our choices being indirect observations of our brain states in a quantum manner.” IAN LANG, LONDON

the generally-accepted interpretation of quantum mechanics is related to an absence of similar considerations that would 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 least, of very great 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. Bohr retorted that it worked whether you believed in it or not. The concept of free will is a horseshoe hanging over the door of the philosophical academy. Long may it remain there. ALISTAIR MACFARLANE BARMOUTH, NORTH WALES

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 it is hard to think of any question of greater consequence. Thus it was very welcome to see 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 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/brain cannot be manipulating you the whole time if (as 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 2016

taken (hypnotism) and even abdicated (turning all decisions over to coin flips). We may also wish to compare dreams in which we have no free will (most 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. KEITH GILMOUR GLASGOW 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 are but explanations of reality. If we conflate 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] 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 about Freedom’ in 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 observations. This process of abstraction 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. STEVE BREWER ST IVES, 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 akrasia, 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! Lack of coercion (Woo) is not enough to establish responsibility (speaking metaphysically and not legally). ‘Coercion’ means nothing if it doesn’t restrict some pre-existing freedom. If my un-coerced choice was determined at the Big Bang then I cannot be responsible for it now

anyway! Determinism 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, and reasons) 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 out, 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. MATTHEW RAPAPORT, CALIFORNIA 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. I was however left uncertain as to how Scrooge may avoid his doom. On the one hand, Professor Kamber says – as did Gilbert Ryle many 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 the next event to 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 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, or insights – in other words, as precursors to decisions. And because our thoughts, however they arise, are ultimately the subject of our (relatively) rational checking processes, then even randomly generated 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 miserly 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 not the missing third way? PAUL BUCKINGHAM ANNECY, 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 (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 chimpanzees’ self-appointed 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 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 were therefore not ‘full persons’ 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 is that 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 shift in jurisprudence. Judges mostly leave major 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, WARWICKSHIRE DEAR EDITOR: I have been a volunteer with the Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project off of Los Angeles for thirty years, and often witness harassment of whales by boaters, kayakers, and 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 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 respect, equal civil rights may be legal, but not respected. CORINE SUTHERLAND LOS ANGELES

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 in the parish church at Ockham which was designed and 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 William of Occam is mentioned! 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 depict earth, air, water and 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. STEPHEN 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 can be figured 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 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 might be wrong. At one time 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. 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, OAKLAND, CA https://fredleavitt.wordpress.com Godly Causes and Effects DEAR EDITOR: Roger Jennings argues (Letters, Issue 112) that the word ‘God’ is conceptually incoherent. He seems to be saying that the concept itself cannot be made coherent. Yet there seems no obvious sense in which he can be correct. Even taking a minimal definition of God – say, something like ‘First Cause’ – the concept is very coherent: as coherent, in fact, as the concept of a causal chain, which everyone will recognize as quite an ordinary scientific one. To fill out the Theistic claim to say ‘the First Cause is intelligent’ would create no more difficulty, since ‘intelligent’ is also a very commonly-used adjective, that a great many of us find quite coherent, especially when we use it in reference to other humans. DR S. ANDERSON, LONDON, ONTARIO

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 standards” in Osama Bin Laden’s Messages to the 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 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; a revaluation of belief in the promotion of individual achievement and purpose for the benefit of all, and exposure of indoctrination as a form of abuse. JOHN GREENBANK, MOSTERTON Killer Logic DEAR EDITOR: I was perplexed by Robert Newman’s unsatisfying critique of autonomous killing machines (‘Can Robots Be Ethical?’, Issue 110). The origin of my complaint is his final argument, that humans can assess factors machines can’t. I find it to be quite the opposite. Humans can calculate, of course; but not very well. Where we excel, at least compared to machines, is in making and then justifying under-determined decisions: when the information we have and the logic we follow are insufficient to clearly identify the best course of action, we can still act. We rule out the preposterous, the outlandish, and the impossible in order to arbitrarily pick one among the remaining possibilities. We don’t ‘fly in the face of logic’ here; our logics are simply insufficient. Then – and this could be the greatest of human geniuses – we justify ourselves using an elaborate poetry of reasons that make our action seem to be

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 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 rationalize because we’re so bad at following logics, computers 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 examples suggest 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 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. The problem is our faith in our judgement. It buttresses our confidence in ourselves when we play sovereign, legislator, judge, and executive – the roles that regularly require under-determined, ‘executive’ decisions. We who make important decisions must be endowed with nigh divine judgement, or so the story goes... We don’t, in fact, need judgement to the extent we play these roles, however, because in them we just make the rules and precedents. The capacity to judge with which the rest of us are endowed then amounts to the ability to follow the arbitrary decrees of authority. In other words, falling for rationalizations can only help our leaders’ efforts to develop autonomous killing machines and pretexts for their use. Paradoxically, the only hope of clearing the air of such nonsense might be nuanced, intricate, and digital logics that reduce uncertainty to the point where rationalization becomes obsolete. PETER BRAUN, OTTAWA, ONTARIO April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 43

AMERICAN PSYCHO acques Lacan (1901-1981) was a French psychoanalytical philosopher. I would like to apply some of his ideas to Mary Harron’s film American Psycho (2000) in order to understand the psychotic behaviour of its protagonist, ‘Patrick Bateman’. My hope is that explaining the film in these terms will contribute to a better understanding of psychosis. Specifically, I want to show that we can understand ‘Bateman’s’ psychotic behaviour in Lacanian terms, since his behaviour at the end of this movie demonstrates the lived experience of psychosis, where, as Lacan says, “That which has not seen the light of day in the symbolic appears in the real.” All will be revealed.

J

Lacan & Psychosis To understand Lacan’s interpretation of psychosis, it is imperative to first grasp his concept of ‘foreclosure’. In Lacan, Language, and Philosophy (2009), Russell Grigg explains that foreclosure is an “initial, primary expulsion” of an idea or symbol whose expulsion “constitutes a domain that is external to, in the sense of radically alien or foreign to, the subject and the subject’s world. Lacan calls this domain the ‘real’.” Thus the ‘real’ in Lacan’s sense is not simply 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 American Psycho. I put ‘Patrick Bateman’ in inverted commas because, as will be explained, ‘Patrick Bateman’ is not real-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 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 44 Philosophy Now

●

April/May 2016

will do so, for instance, in the form of hallucinations or delusions. As Grigg explains, the “real is capable of intruding into the subject’s experience in a way that finds him or her devoid of any means of protection” (ibid). Hence, as Lacan says, “That which has not seen the light of day in the symbolic appears in the real.” This is exactly what we find in American Psycho. In even deeper Lacanian terms, the movie demonstrates that the main character in American Psycho creates the imaginary reality of ‘Patrick Bateman’ through foreclosure of a ‘primordial signifier’ (symbol) – ‘the Name-of-the-Father’, which we might think of as the idea of paternal authority. Lacanian scholars commonly agree that the foreclosure of this primordial signifier is the cause of psychosis. This is because this signifier allows a person to overcome the Oedipus complex, since “Its function in the Oedipus complex is to be the vehicle of the law that regulates desire – both the subject’s desire and the omnipotent desire of the maternal figure.” In other words, the Oedi-

pus complex is overcome through the ‘paternal metaphor’ of the Name-of-theFather. This “is an operation in which the Name-of-the-Father is substituted for the mother’s desire, thereby producing a new species of meaning.” Without this new meaning concerning the desire of the mother provided by the signifier of the Name-of-the-Father, “the subject is left prey to... the mother’s unregulated desire, confronted by an obscure enigma... that the subject lacks the means to comprehend” (ibid). The foreclosure of this primordial signifier is therefore catastrophic for the person undergoing it, resulting in psychosis. The Real In American Psycho In his article ‘Diagnosing an American Psycho’ (International Review of Psychiatry, 21, 3), Wayne Parry provides a summary of the plot of the movie. The narrative centres around ‘Patrick Bateman’s’ murder of his colleague Paul Allen. As Parry says, “Bateman chooses to kill Allen out of envy. They meet for dinner and afterwards, in

That awful moment when your lawyer tells you you aren’t a serial killer.

© LIONS GATE FILMS 2000

Films

Matthew Gildersleeve goes to the movies with Jacques Lacan.

Film Review

Film Review

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. Lawyer: But that’s simply not possible. And I don’t find this funny anymore. Patrick: It never was supposed to be. Why isn’t it possible? Lawyer : It’s just not. Patrick: Why not, you stupid bastard? Lawyer : Because I had dinner with Paul Allen… twice in London, just ten days ago.

Films

Jacques Lacan

LACAN PORTRAIT © IRONIE 2007

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’ serial killing 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, an estate agent asks him to leave after Bateman questions what had happened there.” This is in fact the first of three crucial 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 a clue that ‘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 overflows reality” (Looking Awry: An Introduction To Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture, 1992, p.20). There are also two other moments in the film when the real overflows into ‘Bateman’s’ symbolic world. The second of these is even more significant than the first. “Bateman runs into his lawyer in a bar and asks if he got the phone message last night. The lawyer believes that the call was a joke. Bateman tries to convince him that it is true but the lawyer states that he had dinner twice with Paul Allen in London ten days prior, leaving the reality of the events ambiguous” (‘Diagnosing an American Psycho’). It is important to note something else from this scene that was missed by Parry but picked up by André Loiselle in ‘Cana-

This is a crucial moment to retrospectively understand everything in the film up until then. This scene highlights the expulsion and foreclosure of the real in ‘Bateman’s’ psychotic symbolism, since it turns out that not only did ‘Bateman’ not kill Paul Allen, but ‘Bateman’s’ real name is Davis! Unfortunately, what the lawyer, Carnes, is saying to ‘Bateman’ is “radically alien or foreign to the subject and the subject’s world.” It’s alien to Davis (‘Bateman’) because, as Lacan might put it, “the desire of the Other” has been foreclosed from Davis’s psychotic symbolic reality (in this instance, ‘the Other’ is the lawyer, who called him Davis and who told him that Paul Allen is not dead; and so the desire of the Other is what the lawyer believes). Yet although Davis may have excluded a fact from his symbolic universe “it may never-

theless appear in reality.” Thus Lacan’s remark, “That which has not seen the light of day in the symbolic appears in the real.” This is exactly what we find in this scene in American Psycho, when the real intrudes on Davis’s psychosis. The conclusion that Davis lacks the means to comprehend the desire of the Other – what the lawyer is saying – is supported by the final scene of the movie, where after hearing this 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 demonstrates that Davis lacks the means to “comprehend the desire of the Other”: with this detail, the viewer can understand that we are now watching events through ‘Bateman’s’ psychotic 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 moment in which 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 and the 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 also now recognise that the majority of the film has been shown through this psychotic fantasy. © MATTHEW GILDERSLEEVE 2016

Matthew Gildersleeve teaches and researches at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 45

Philosophy Now Shop Digital Editions (for more info visit philosophynow.org/digital) Philoso

phy Now

Apps for iPad/iPhone, Android and Kindle Fire

Zinio

Philosophy Now’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.) We also sell these web subscriptions separately, from our store at philosophynow.org/shop

Nook Philosophy Now’s edition for Barnes & Noble’s Nook reader also works brilliantly on the Nook app on iPhones. (14 day free trial)

Back Issues – Paper Issue 98 Camus: Life, Ambivalence, Absurdity, Transcendence, etc / Testing Issue 99 Issue 100 Issue 101 Issue 102 Issue 103 Issue 104 Issue 105 Issue 106 Issue 107 Issue 108 Issue 109

Epicurus / Giordano Bruno / What Is Philosophical Counseling? God’s Existence, or Not: William Lane Craig, Simon Blackburn, Van Harvey, Timothy Chappell / Consciousness / Kierkegaard Philosophy & Language: Chomsky, Davidson, Derrida, Deleuze, Proust / Happiness / Rorty / What is Knowledge, Truth, Causation? Plato & Democracy: Critiques & Analyses / Kant and Rand / Feelings & Philosophy / Gandhi Opera review / Obit. Colin Wilson Ethics in Society: Prison; Consumer Responsibility; Drugs in Sport; Judging Islamic Culture / Brief Life: Marx / Existence / Empiricism Wittgenstein, Tractatus: Cannons, Cases & Codes / Lenk on Dewey / Midgley on History of Philosophy / Consequentialism is impossible The Other Greeks: Pre-Socratics, Democritus, Diogenes, Epicurus / Nietzsche on Love / The Morality Machine / Obscurantism / Fichte Peace: Innate Violence?; Pacificism not passivism; personal peace; love & happiness / Darwin / Berkeley’s 4th Dialogue / Short Hist of Phil How to Think: Critically Reason, Solve Paradoxes, Not Refute Yourself, etc / Hegel’s heirs reviews / Aliens vs Vegetarians / Rorty Modern French Philosophy: Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, Kristeva, Badiou / Je Suis Liberal / Noam Chomsky speech / Personal Identity Art: Encountering it, problems with it, what is it, and where’s it going? / Music / Descartes vs Animals / Self-interest in morality Science & Morality / Einstein’s Ethics / Prisoner’s Dilemma and Evolution / Defending Badiou / Atheism on 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 also still have copies of these earlier back 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 you would like). For full details 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. Binders: Why not give your back issues a secure and happy home? Our smart green Philosophy Now 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 US$23 Can$35 Two volumes: UK£25 US$40 Can$55 Three volumes: UK£35 US$55 Can$75 Four volumes: UK£45 US$69 Can$95

Aus$35 Aus$55 Aus$75 Aus$95

NZ$40 NZ$65 NZ$90 NZ$115

RoW£17 RoW£30 RoW£40 RoW£51

IP-BASED ONLINE ACCESS is available for institutions – please visit philosophynow.org/institutions 46 Philosophy Now

●

April/May 2016

Philosophy Now Subscriptions Philosophy Now is sold from newsstands and bookstores in more than a dozen 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 [email protected] or phone 01959 534171 To tell us about a change of address, please email [email protected]

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: Volume 1/Volume 2/Volume 3/Volume 4. (please circle)

• I’d like to buy the following paper back issues: ______________________________________

• 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 ___ binders to hold my back issues.

• I’d like to buy the following paper back issues: ______________________________________

TOTAL AMOUNT 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 in your card details below: Card no. Expiry______ Security Code______ Name on card___________________

Please make your cheque payable to ‘Philosophy Now’ or fill in your Mastercard /Visa /Maestro card details below: Card no. Expiry______ Security Code______ Name on card___________________ and send it to: Philosophy Now Subscriptions Kelvin House, Grays Road, 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])

April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 47

Peter Caws critiques Jacques Lacan’s 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 SOME THIRTY YEARS AGO, AT an academic retreat in the south of France, I met a young woman who announced herself as a lacanienne – a disciple of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-1981). At that time Lacan’s so-called ‘seminars’ were being published one after another in French, as the Seminaires. However, they weren’t really seminars, more like meandering lectures transcribed by faithful followers. There were already a lot of them, and more to come. Reading them was obligatory for people like my new acquaintance, and I wondered how she managed to take it all in. “Je pratique,” she said, “la lecture flottante” – “I use the technique of floating reading.” I knew about attention flottante – a psychoanalytic practice in which the analyst allows him- or herself to listen as it were loosely to the patient, without any expectation of particular clues to the latter’s state of mind, without taking any notes, almost without listening at all; rather, letting the patient’s unconscious speak directly to his or her own. But I hadn’t come across the technique as applied to reading, unless in the form of what we used to call ‘skim-

LACAN PORTRAIT © IGNACIO GARATE MARTINEZ 2012

Lacan proclaiming his genius

48 Philosophy Now

●

April/May 2016

ming’. Maybe it could be called ‘reading with the third eye’, after ‘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 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, 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 – 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 readership 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 in the history of ideas. His early publications, such as 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) – 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 foundation of L’Ecole Freudienne de Paris. That book, no doubt heavily edited and rewritten from the seminar transcript, showed that he could be fairly straightforward when he wanted to be. Among the fans at his weekly performances, however, he didn’t have to bother; professionals and hangers-on alike flocked to their guru’s presentations and drank in every word – with what degree of comprehension it is sometimes hard to fathom. The French title of the tenth Seminar is L’Angoisse, whose translation 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 the specifically medical use of anxiété is as a pathological type of angoisse. So is Lacan’s anxiety pathological? It would have been helpful to have some clarification of this Book Reviews

Books little linguistic tangle. The original French publication of L’Angoisse appears to have been a limited edition, no doubt intended, like its spoken original, for a relatively small audience of professionals and cognoscenti. It came in two hefty volumes, softbound in bright orange, with no indication of publisher, or place or date of publication. Having tracked down one of the few original copies, I find that it was put out in 1982 by a small printing house called Piranha (we can make of that association what we will). The seminar itself had taken place in 1962-3, the official French edition was published at Le Seuil in 2004, and the English translation is part of a series now being put out by Polity Press – one can’t help wondering, with what readership in mind? Fifty-odd years is a long time to wait for the word from on high, and it would seem that only those transfixed by Lacan’s fame and charisma, or perhaps professionally persuaded enough to wish to follow his eccentric example, would want to wade through these rambling monologues. The Seminars, together with Lacan’s other works, constitute a massive and repetitive body of doctrine, intended to throw light on the human condition and the practice of psychiatry. I will return to the doctrines, but given the occasion of this review, will first address the claim, sometimes direct and sometimes implied, that they are of philosophical importance. ‘Anguish’ and ‘anxiety’ belong to a closely-related cluster of terms, including ‘fear’ and ‘dread’, which has been a happy hunting ground for existentialists since Søren Kierkegaard (18131855). This is Lacan’s chance to show the relevance of his concept of anxiety to the recent history of philosophy, and he takes it in the very early pages of the Seminar. I provide here an example of the way he approaches this topic, both to give a flavour of his style and the verbal padding and glancing commentary that is typical of his approach, and also to suggest how easily this book could have been a lot shorter, with a bit of determined editing: “Everyone knows that projecting the I onto the inroad to anxiety has for some time been the ambition of a philosophy that is termed existentialist. There’s no shortage of references, from Kierkegaard to Gabriel Marcel, Shestov, Berdyaev and a few others. Not all of them have the same place, nor can they be used in the same way, but I insist on saying at the start of this disquisition that this philosophy – insofar as, from its patron saint, named first off, down to those whose names I’ve listed after him, it incontestably shows some

Book Reviews

decline – is marked, I feel, with some haste and even some disarray, I’d say, in relation to the reference in which, in the same era, the movement of thought has put its trust, namely, the reference to history… Since I have called on two witnesses here, Sartre and Heidegger, I won’t hesitate to call on a third, in so far as I don’t think him unworthy of representing those who are here, observing what he is going to say, and that’s me” (pp.7-8).

No hesitation then in enrolling himself among the leading thinkers of his time. Yet it is notable that in all this he does not go into any detail as to the positions actually held by the philosophers in question, but just contents himself with name-dropping. This is quite characteristic of his mode of operation – he comes across not as learned and scholarly, but as grandiose and narcissistic. “Those who are here, observing what he is going to say” is just one example of a recurring preoccupation with himself in relation to his audience: here they are, all of them, listening to me, so I must be as good as these other people. Confident in his authority and domination, Lacan talks down to these listeners, repeatedly alluding to what he has been teaching them, what they will miss if they don’t attend regularly, what other people have missed by not paying attention to him. A typical case: he recommends that they look up the texts of Kurt Goldstein, “very accessible texts since they’ve been translated into French, to see how close these formulations are to our own, and how much they’d gain in clarity by referring to ours more expressly” (p.60). Again, it’s all about him. Two delicious ironies here: Goldstein’s work was actually done a decade or so earlier than Lacan’s; and Lacan takes pride in his own lack of clarity, his style having “a certain Gongorism about it, as everyone knows” (p.42) (Luis de Gongora was famous for the deliberate obscurity of his writing). After acknowledging this similarity, Lacan says, “Well, I don’t give a damn.” Assessing Lacan’s Doctrine Extracted from its vanity and verbosity, Lacanian doctrine does represent an impressive theoretical structure, replete with borrowings from and allusions to a wide range of disciplines, above all of course Freudian psychoanalysis, of which Lacan considered himself the heir and trustee; but also Saussurean linguistics, and most especially, mathematical topology. This is not the place for exposition of this doctrine, which in its roundabout and frag-

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 does belong among the sciences (see for example my ‘Psychoanalysis as the Idiosyncratic Science of the Individual 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 – 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 of higher dimensionality scattered through

A ‘higherdimensional structure’: A Klein bottle

April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 49

Books

LACAN OLDER PORTRAIT © PABLO SECCA 2009

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 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.)

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 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, 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 2016

ted acolytes. In a review of Elisabeth Roudinesco’s history of psychiatry in France, Raymond Tallis aptly dubbed him “the shrink from hell.” All this is not a recommendation not to read this book – I have certainly not done justice to its eccentric richness: for example, its treatment of the fundamental complexity of the relation between subject and object, from the ‘objet petit a’ (a from autre), ‘the object’ with a small ‘o’, to the fullfledged Other (Autre) as Object, by way of the subject’s coming to specular awareness in the mirror-image of itself. The ‘objet petit a’ is any object of primitive desire that is not fully an object for a subject, on the part of a subject that does not yet fully know that it is a subject. That’s one way of looking at it at least. And along the way is the flotsam I mentioned at the beginning, including details of the genitalia and sex life of exotic animals and insects, as well as of the complementary complexities of sadism and masochism. In this connection Lacan takes issue with an old distinction that holds fear to be of some fearful object, but anxiety to be a state of apprehension without an object. No, he says, anxiety is not without an object, although that object often turns out to be an attitude or state of mind of some Other on whom the anxious subject wishes to make an impression or from whom he or she wants recognition (as in the case of the ‘performance anxiety’ many psychiatric patients are familiar with). No, by all means read Lacan if you have an appetite for long-winded free association and 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 from him about any particular human being. We aren’t all made like that. It’s not obvious that any of us are. © PROF PETER CAWS 2016

Peter Caws is University Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at The George Washington University, Washington DC. • Anxiety: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. A. R. Price, Polity Press, 2014, 352 pp, $19.95 pb, ISBN: 074566041X

Walter Benjamin & the Media by Jaeho Kang DOES IT MATTER whether this review is presented to you in a one-off public gathering

that takes place at a unique historical time and place, such as a literary salon, or in an edition 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, does it make any difference if you’re reading this not in the print version, but via some earlytwenty-first-century communication tech, such as a smartphone or an iPad? Walter Benjamin’s Information Age The German Jewish philosopher 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, Dr Jaeho Kang illuminates how and why Benjamin’s theoretical contributions to understanding 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 – the nineteenth century urban consumer’s whimsical street-strolling, involving serial observations of street spectacle, of shop windows, shop fronts, café terraces, pedestrians – 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 transform our experience, shape our perceptual capacities and faculties, and reconfigure embodied experience in relation to both private and public spaces. Consider Benjamin’s account of the impact of printing on oral culture and storytelling, in particular, its role in the social disintegration of 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 communication predominates. Kang also shows how such observations anticipated the analyses of later media theorists such as Marshall McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard. Benjamin is probably best known for his highly influential essay The Work of Art in Book Reviews

Books STREET CREDITS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: BERKELEY © URBAN-COMMONSWIKI 2005; KÖLN © ELYA 2005; PARIS © MYRABELLA 2014; TOKYO © RUDOLF AMMANN 2004

Serial observations of street spectacle as gained by surfing the web

an Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936). Here he expounded the theory that what sets apart works of art is their ‘aura’ – which is precisely what cannot be captured in any reproduction. While an original artwork possesses a unique existence immersed in and arising from tradition and ritual and conditioned by a magical authenticity and authority, the age of mechanical reproduction demolished these conditions. The sense of art images and objects as unique and permanent was replaced by a sense of their transitoriness and reproducibility. According to Benjamin, this shift in perception reflects a significant change in the consciousness of the masses. Kang points out that for Benjamin, the media’s possibilities are always political in character. However, in contrast to other members of the ‘Frankfurt School’ of Critical Theory, Benjamin saw opportunities for political rebellion within the media’s mechanisms of ideological propagation. The work of art can be emancipated from the trappings of tradition. So although the decline of individualised art is greeted with a sense of loss, Benjamin also sees liberating possibilities in mechanical reproduction. The shift to reproducibility contains the promise of bringing the very apparatus Book Reviews

of communication technology closer to people, both spatially and humanly, so that media users can be transformed from consumers or suppliers into engineers, ‘refunctioning’ communications technology for progressive political ends. Kang’s Medium In Culture Like Benjamin’s, Kang’s breadth of reference is extraordinary. This may make this book less accessible to the Critical Theory novice, but it enriches it for readers already familiar with the Frankfurt School’s main theorists and its detractors. At every step Kang points out Benjamin’s distinctive contributions to understanding the human impact of media, revealing how he influenced more recent media theorists, or how his work represented a dissenting viewpoint vis-a-vis his well-known peers. Kang also details the influences of a whole array of artists – Baudelaire, Brecht, Kafka, Leskov, and Proust – on Benjamin’s thought. Although dense, this book is expertly organized according to four key themes: the crisis of communication; mediated storytelling; technological reproducibility, and the media city. And in his conclusion Kang draws out the further theoretical implications of Benjamin’s media critique by comparing it with the central doctrine of the

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 social relations: we are cemented into the status quo via mass 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 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. Their 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 conventions of a work of art, but 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 and unique contributions to Critical Theory. It shows how Benjamin was able to strike a balance between hailing the revolutionary possibilities 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 in London since 2002, and is author of Feminist Film Studies (2007). • Walter Benjamin and the Media: The Spectacle of Modernity, by Jaeho Kang, Polity Press, 2014, £15.99 pb, 196pp, ISBN: 0745645216

April/May 2016 ● Philosophy Now 51

“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

hat the arts do not progress in the way that the sciences progress does not seem to worry us. We don’t wring our hands because the latest Nobel-prize-winning poet or dramatist cannot hold a candle to Shakespeare. A contemporary scientist who had not moved beyond Galileo, on the other hand, would be an object of ridicule. But what of philosophy? Does it progress, and if it doesn’t, should we dismiss it as a cognitive relic – an ox cart in the age of the jet plane? Philosophy versus Science David Chalmers, best known for his work in the philosophy of mind, addresses this question in an illuminating recent article, ‘Why Isn’t There More Progress in Philosophy?’ in Philosophy, 90 (1), Jan 2015. One marker of progress, he argues, would be convergence to a consensus on answers to the Big Questions. By this criterion, things don’t look good. Take Chalmers’ own area of interest: the philosophy of mind. According to a survey he quotes, physicalists, who nowadays tend to believe that consciousness is identical to brain activity, and non-physicalists (such as dualists) are still slugging it out, centuries after Hobbes and Descartes set those hares running. What is more, even if there had been consensus, this wouldn’t mean convergence to the truth. At present physicalism commands a majority opinion, but, as both Chalmers and I believe, it is probably wrong. It’s no use philosophers fighting back by pointing out that science, too, is in a state of permanent quarrel with itself, and consensus is only temporary. The history of science is a history of discarded theories. There is, however, a crucial extra element. Each epoch in science hands down solid results to its successors, giving them some52 Philosophy Now

●

April/May 2016

The ‘P’ Word Raymond Tallis asks, does it matter if philosophy does not make progress? thing to build on. In the history of physics from Archimedes to Galileo to Newton to Einstein, important truths survive successive revolutions in thought. Einstein did not disprove the idea of the measurement of the volume of irregular objects by displacement of water that prompted Archimedes to leap out of his apocryphal bath. In short, there is cumulative gain in the power of science to explain and predict phenomena, which is translated into ever more potent technology. There is no such apparent cumulaDavid tive gain in philosophical Chalmers explanations. The contrast with mathematics is even more striking. As Chalmers points out, of the twenty-three mathematical problems that David Hilbert proposed in 1900, there is universal consensus on the solution to ten of them, and partial consensus on another seven. None of the problems in Bertrand Russell’s 1912 The Problems of Philosophy has come close to this level of consensus. There are of course areas in the sciences where progress seems to have stalled; for example, the reconciliation of quantum theory and relativity, explaining the origin of life, and making sense of the relationship between brain activity and consciousness. These, however, are at the cutting edge, behind which there is a massive body of solved problems and robust knowledge. And, as Peter van Inwagen (quoted by Chalmers) points out “The cutting edge of philosophy is… pretty much the whole of it.” Clarifying Philosophy What conclusion shall we draw from the contrast between science – “the art of the soluble” as Peter Medawar called it – and philosophy, whose clear-up rate of problems is such that, if it were a police force, it would be taken into special measures? Shall we deem that Plato, Descartes,

Kant, Frege, and Russell have taken us no further on the road to truth? Or shall we conclude that solving problems – or even exposing them as pseudo-problems and dissolving them in true Wittgensteinian fashion – is not the ultimate or the primary aim of philosophy? Chalmers argues that seeing philosophy as a search for answers to problems is “overly scientistic.” (After all, once they are open to empirical investigation there is a tendency for problems to migrate to science.) Perhaps, he suggests, it is a quest for something else: “understanding, clarity, enlightenment.” This would certainly correspond to the goal of philosophy described by Peter Strawson in Skepticism and Naturalism – Some Varieties (1985), of getting “a clear view of our concepts and their place in our lives” and establishing “the connections between the major structural features or elements of our conceptual scheme.” This is more ambitious and interesting than philosophy as pre-scientific problem-solving, or even as primitive science carried out from an armchair. And it captures something central to the traditional philosophical enterprise: stepping back from, and reflecting upon, our ways of speaking and thinking about the world. But it is still not the whole story. Philosophical inquiry also questions, at the most fundamental level, our customary ways of explaining and understanding what we take to be real. This includes challenging the natural sciences when they encroach upon the traditional preoccupations of the humanities, such as metaphysics, and especially understanding our own nature. Philosophy offers an external view of the character and scope of scientific understanding. It may also contribute to the project of seeing how the different sciences relate to one another, and (more importantly) examine the vexed relationship between the scientific account of the world and the way we experience it in everyday life – “the manifest image” of the world, as Wilfrid Sellars called it.

CHALMERS PIC © ZERESHK 2008

allis T in Wonderland

CARTOON © CHRIS MADDEN 2016

WWW.CHRISMADDEN.CO.UK

Pinch Yourself Reflections, both descriptive and critical, on the ‘conceptual schemes’ through which we experience the world and indeed view ourselves, are clearly 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 history of 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 there’, beyond our 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 sought. 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

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 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 presuppositions, 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 ordinary (that is to say half-asleep) wakefulness. There will 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.

allis T in Wonderland Join The Conversation If – as must be the case – complete selfunderstanding 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 hunt for “that 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, 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 began in 1963 (“between the trial of Lady Chatterley 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 closeness to its beginning – its lack of progress – is connected with its surpassing value. © PROF. RAYMOND TALLIS 2016

Raymond Tallis’s latest book is The Black Mirror: Fragments of an Obituary for Life (Atlantic). His website is raymondtallis.com. 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 awake? That moment when you’re not 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 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, driving to work in his very important car and 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 was different. The feeling did not 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 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 cartwheel when you have a goddamn knee replacement!” he shouted in his excitement as he opened the door. “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 little resistance (it was that kind of day) the postman soon obliged, and was tumbling across the floor with a curious grace. A few streets away, a bus driver, suddenly feeling the loss of a long-dead dog, stopped his bus and wept bitterly. A policeman holding up traffic, realised his hands provided a perfect imitation 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 ● April/May 2016

wonder of everything that ever has been, everything that 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…” 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 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, he shouted at Mr Pepperfield, ”I conceive of the most beautiful woman that ever existed!” “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 rushed out of their houses or left their 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 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 in it just suddenly pops out of existence?” There was silence then, because it did. © KIMBERLEY MARTINEZ 2016

Kimberley Martinez is a social worker in Scotland, with a 13-year-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 Span* (online) programmes * Validated by Middlesex University

Applications 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 can apply with an undergraduate degree in any subject including science, social   


  



  
glasgow.ac.uk/pgt/philosophymlitt

In partnership with

FOR FURTHER 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 Now 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 CHANGERS WELCOME 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 









 




 






 





!
 
 


 

 

 
 



This popular science book is widely available as a paperback and ebook on Amazon and other online retailers.