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Philosophy Now, EDITORIAL & NEWS 43a Jerningham Road, 4 Plato on a Plate Rick Lewis Telegraph Hill, London SE14 5NQ 5 News in Brief United Kingdom 54 Obituary: P.K.F. Robinson Tel. 020 7639 7314 Michael O’Connor tells us about the famous Diagonalist [email protected] www.philosophynow.org PLATO (AND SOCRATES) Editor-in-Chief Rick Lewis 6 Plato: A Theory of Forms Editor Anja Steinbauer David Macintosh explains Plato’s famous idea about ideas. Assistant Editor Grant Bartley Graphic Design Grant Bartley, Anja 8 Picking a Fight With Plato Steinbauer, Rick Lewis Ed Fraser argues that Plato’s theory of knowledge is circular Online Editor Bora Dogan Film Editor Thomas Wartenberg 10 Plato’s Just State Reviews Editor Charles Echelbarger Chris Wright critiques Plato’s view of the ideal society Marketing Manager Sue Roberts Administration Ewa Stacey, Heidi 14 Addicts, Mythmakers and Philosophers Pintschovius Alan Brody considers the Socratic explanation of addiction Advertising Team 18 Plato’s Neurobiology Jay Sanders, Ellen Stevens PLATO comes alive! [email protected] Elizabeth Laidlaw sees parallels with modern theories of the brain UK Editors pages 6-19 Rick Lewis, Anja Steinbauer, OTHER ARTICLES Bora Dogan, Grant Bartley 20 US Editors Galahad versus Odysseus Dr Timothy J. Madigan (St John Fisher As our token concession to the Olympics, Emrys Westacott 2010 College), Prof. Charles Echelbarger contrasts honour and strategic thinking in sport. (SUNY), Prof. Raymond Pfeiffer (Delta College), Prof. Jonathan Adler (CUNY) 26 The Ethics of Tax ORPORATION Contributing Editors C Richard Baron asks why & when it is ethical to pay tax. Alexander Razin (Moscow State Univ.) ISNEY UK Editorial Advisors 29 Reason as a Universal Constant © D Piers Benn, Chris Bloor, Gordon Giles, Stuart Greenstreet reasonably considers C.S. Lewis’s argument Paul Gregory, John Heawood, Kate Leech that the ability to reason is not natural, so must be supernatural US Editorial Advisors FILM IMAGE Prof. Raymond Angelo Belliotti, Toni 32 A Brief Life: Jean-Jacques Rousseau Vogel Carey, Prof. Rosalind Ekman Graeme Garrard condenses the life of the infamous philosophe Ladd, Prof. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, ONDERLAND W Prof. Harvey Siegel REVIEWS Cover Design by Chris Madden, based LICE IN on classical busts of Plato & Socrates. A 42 Book: The Moral Landscape

Printed by Graspo CZ, a.s., Philosophical Wonder by Sam Harris, reviewed by Bill Meacham Pod Sternberkem 324, 76302 Zlin, Alice in Wonderland, 44 Book: The Philosopher & The Wolf Czech Republic page 46 by Mark Rowlands, reviewed by Greg Linster UK newstrade distribution through: 46 Film: Alice in Wonderland Comag Specialist Division, Heather Rivera discovers a wonderful underworld of feminism Tavistock Works, Tavistock Rd, West Drayton, Middlesex UB7 7QX REGULARS Tel. 01895 433800 35 Food For Thought: Emily Brontë – Philosopher U.S. & Canadian bookstores through: Tim Madigan wants moor! Disticor Magazine Distribution Services 695 Westney Road S., Unit 14, 36 Letters to the Editor Ajax, Ontario L1S 6M9 39 Question of the Month: How Does Language Work? Tel. (905) 619 6565 You can understand how you can understand our readers’ The opinions expressed in this magazine answers to this question even as you read them. do not necessarily reflect the views of 48 the editor or editorial board of Tallis In Wonderland: A Hasty Report From A Tearing Hurry Philosophy Now. Raymond Tallis is just in time for a column on timing. 52 Ethical Episodes: ‘A’ Is For ‘Assumption’ Philosophy Now is published by Anja Publications Ltd Joel Marks re-examines some dangerous assumptions. ISSN 0961-5970 Jean-Jacques FICTION Back Issues p.50 6 My Mommy’s Cookies Subscriptions p.51 Rousseau is 300! Courtney Gibbons tells us the true source of Plato’s inspiration on 28th June. See page 32

May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 3 Editorial Plato on a Plate

he bare facts are these. Plato was a wrestler. The name and is widely regarded as the first university in the Western Tby which we know him was his ring name, meaning world. One of Plato’s students there was Aristotle. ‘Broad Shoulders’. At some point he fell in with a scruffy and Plato led a lively and adventurous life, which included talkative old fellow called Socrates. Socrates and his friends being appointed advisor to the tyrant of Sicily, being captured used to gather in the Agora – the marketplace in Athens – to by pirates and being sold as a slave. (Fortunately a benefactor discuss philosophy. Socrates himself claimed to know nothing, spotted him in the slave auction, bought him and set him but made a habit of questioning prominent citizens about free). In his dialogues Plato discusses many of the central their opinions, dialogues which often ended with his victims questions of philosophy – What can we know? How should hopelessly contradicting themselves or otherwise looking like we live? How should society be organised? What is love? idiots. This made him about as popular as you would expect. What is courage? Is God good? Plato’s dialogues are studded Socrates called himself the ‘gadfly’, stinging the Athenians so with brilliant thought experiments and arresting insights, and they wouldn’t fall asleep. He became a well-known figure, the are certainly among the greatest classics of world literature. subject of a satirical play by Aristophanes (The Clouds). Then His theories became so powerfully influential that the 20th Athens lost a war to Sparta and a short, grim period of century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once described oligarchical rule (the Thirty Tyrants) followed before the whole of subsequent philosophy as “footnotes to Plato”. democracy was restored. However, in an atmosphere of Despite this, it has somehow taken us twenty years to get recrimination the Athenians searched for the causes of their around to having an issue of Philosophy Now dedicated to downfall, and some blamed Socrates for having undermined Plato. There is certainly plenty to discuss. We won’t get into the moral basis of society. Socrates had a pretty good civic the whole subject of which of the views discussed originated record – not only was he a decorated war hero, but in the with Socrates and which with Plato. Plato’s most famous time of the Thirty Tyrants he had shown his integrity by theories and thought experiments are contained in his refusing to participate in the arrest of a fellow citizen – but an dialogue, the Republic. As a blueprint for an ideal society it aristocratic pupil of his had had close connections to the strikes most modern eyes as pretty totalitarian (see Chris oligarchical regime, and afterwards Socrates’ enemies used Wright’s article on page 10), but its arguments about justice, this to taint him by association. In a public trial Socrates was the nature of knowledge, and the metaphysical basis of reality found guilty of ‘inventing new gods and corrupting the youth’ are powerful and philosophically acute. It contains one of and sentenced to death. His friends urged him to flee, but he Plato’s key ideas, the Theory of Forms, which David refused, and was executed in 399BC. Macintosh explains on page 6. It also contains Plato’s most Socrates’ enraged followers reacted with one of the most famous thought experiment, the Allegory of the Cave. Edward successful literary protests in history: several of them wrote Fraser argues that Plato’s theory in the Meno about how we dialogues in which Socrates was the main protagonist. It was acquire (or rather, recollect) knowledge is circular. The two as if they wanted to show that Socrates’ detractors had failed following articles concern ways in which Plato’s dialogues are to silence his voice or his persistent, irritating questioning. still relevant to debates going on today: Alan Brody discusses Only the dialogues by Plato and by Xenophon have survived. Socrates’ ideas on addiction and its treatment; and Elizabeth Plato’s first Socratic dialogue was an account of Socrates’ trial. Laidlaw explores parallels between Plato’s theory of the psyche As the trial was a matter of public record and fresh in the and modern neuroscience, and then uses this as a basis for a memories of many Athenians, this dialogue (the Apology) is brain-based approach to ethics. presumably a fairly faithful representation of Socrates’ own Also in this issue, Stuart Greenstreet discusses C.S. Lewis’s views. However, as time passed and Plato wrote more and astonishingly ambitious book Miracles. At the end he points more dialogues, he probably used them increasingly as a out striking similarities between Lewis’s picture of human vehicle for his own philosophical arguments, though still reason and the fundamental constants of modern physics. expressed through the mouth of the character Socrates. Both seem distinct from nature; both are a prerequisite for Plato himself became a famous philosopher and public science; both are necessary, universal and unchanging. It figure who was invited to write constitutions for several Greek struck me as I read that paragraph that he could just as well city states. He established a philosophy school in a grove have been describing Plato’s Forms. They are everywhere and dedicated to a legendary hero, Hecademos. The school took nowhere, they are eternal and they fundamentally determine its name from the grove, becoming known as the Academy, the nature of our cosmos. Assuming that they exist, of course.

4 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 • Ruth Barcan Marcus • Alan Turing Birthday Party • Festival Fun & Frolics • Wikipedia philosophy editor makes a million edits • News reports by Sue Roberts. News

Ruth Barcan Marcus Alan Turing Birthday Party that worrying is good for the brain and The logician Ruth Barcan Marcus died On 15th-16th June a 100th birthday probably vital for survival; evolving in on 19th February, aged 90. Born in the party will be held for Alan Turing (1912- humans along with intelligence to make Bronx, Marcus was a professor at Yale 1954), who will be unable to attend for them more adept at avoiding danger. University for many years. She made orig- obvious reasons. Turing’s birthday is well Alternatively, of course, it could just be inal contributions to many areas of philos- worth celebrating, as his many achieve- that more imaginative people can think of ophy, including metaphysics, philosophy ments in cryptography and computer more things to worry about. of language, and theory of knowledge, but science shaped the modern world. He she is particularly known for her ground- introduced the revolutionary idea that Facts? Forget ‘Em! breaking work on quantified modal logic. computing machines could be controlled In April, inner-London teacher John She was one of the first women philoso- by means of a program of coded instruc- Overton warned the conference of the phers to have a major impact on what has tions stored in the computer’s memory. Association of Teachers and Lecturers that been seen as a particularly male-domi- During WW2 he played a crucial role a return to traditional teaching methods, nated branch of philosophy. within the British team at Bletchley Park with the emphasis on learning dates, facts Though some found her energy and which cracked the coded messages and figures (as recently proposed by the strong will intimidating, former colleagues produced by the Enigma Machine, an British government) could be counter- and students praised her warmth and her achievement often credited with short- productive. He proposed that schools supportive attitude. One member of ening the war. A few years later, a grateful should instead concentrate on teaching Philosophy Now’s editorial board, Prof. nation prosecuted him for homosexuality skills such as independent research, inter- Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, is a former (which was then illegal) and the pressure is preting evidence and critical thinking. He student of Marcus. He told the Yale Daily presumed to have driven him to suicide in suggested that smartphones provide a News: “I think she will always be a model 1954. His other contributions include the ‘substantial’ knowledge bank which make it of the philosophical life. She showed how ‘Turing Test’ for machine intelligence. unnecessary to commit as many facts to one can be a serious philosopher with very The birthday party will be held at memory as in the past. The idea that high standards and a compassionate King’s College, Cambridge, where Turing smartphones could complement or replace person.” was a student and later a fellow. Speakers the memory in our heads resonates well will include a team of experts on Turing, with current theories of ‘extended How The Light Gets In leading scientists and science broadcasters consciousness’ proposed by philosophers Over the first ten days of June, a large including Simon Singh and Stephen and neurologists such as Antonio Damasio. festival will take place in the small town of Wolfram, and well-known philosophers Hay-on-Wye at the foot of the Black Margaret Boden and Dan Dennett. A Grateful World Mountains, on the border between Wales Members of Turing’s family and others Celebrates Justin Knapp Day and England. ‘How the Light Gets In’ who knew him personally will be there to On 19th April it was announced that promises to be an unusual combination of share their memories of him. There will be since 2005, a million edits have been made live music events and philosophical lectures on Turing’s contributions to: to philosophy, religion and politics articles debate. It will include a large number of wartime codebreaking, artificial intelli- on Wikipedia ... by the same man. Justin philosophy talks and panel discussions gence, artificial life, the development of Knapp, a 30-year old graduate of the involving such folk as Luce Irigaray, Mary our technological society, the theory and University of Indiana with degrees in Midgley, James Lovelock, Nigel Lawson, practice of computing and the under- philosophy and politics, has averaged an Brian Eno, and Julian Savulescu. Kevin standing of the human mind. astonishing 385 edits per day ever since he Warwick will be talking about cyborgs, joined the online encyclopedia’s 90,000 and Stephen Cave will be talking about Be Anxious... Be Very Anxious voluntary editors in that year. In recogni- ways to live forever. Philosophy Now’s Anja Research into behavioural patterns has tion of his achievement in becoming the Steinbauer will be giving a talk on senti- thrown interesting light on how worrying first person ever to notch up a million mentality, our columnist Professor correlates with intelligence. A study edits, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales Raymond Tallis will be talking about all reported in the journal Frontiers in Evolu- decreed that April 20th 2012 should be sorts of things and there will be a Philos- tionary Neuroscience reveals that the worst celebrated as Justin Knapp Day. Knapp’s ophy Now dinner on the final weekend. For sufferers of a common anxiety disorder had source of income has been reported as all events advance booking is best, so see a higher IQ than those whose symptoms being pizza delivery, but he is said to have www.howthelightgetsin.org were less severe. The researchers speculate become a folk-hero to fellow editors.

May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 5 Plato: A Theory of Forms David Macintosh explains Plato’s Theory of Forms or Ideas or the non-philosopher, Plato’s Theory of Forms can In his Socratic dialogues Plato argues through Socrates that seem difficult to grasp. If we can place this theory into because the material world is changeable it is also unreliable. Fits historical and cultural context perhaps it will begin to But Plato also believed that this is not the whole story. Behind make a little more sense. this unreliable world of appearances is a world of permanence Plato was born somewhere in 428-427 B.C., possibly in and reliability. Plato calls this more real (because permanent) Athens, at a time when Athenian democracy was already well world, the world of ‘Forms’ or ‘Ideas’ (eidos/idea in Greek). But developed. He belonged to a wealthy and aristocratic family. what is a Platonic Form or Idea? Plato’s family were involved in Athenian politics, so it is likely Take for example a perfect triangle, as it might be described that Plato was no stranger to politics himself. He was also the by a mathematician. This would be a description of the Form or founder of the Academy in Athens, which can be regarded as Idea of (a) Triangle. Plato says such Forms exist in an abstract the Western world’s first university, and its first school of phi- state but independent of minds in their own realm. Considering losophy. He died some time between 348-347 B.C. this Idea of a perfect triangle, we might also be tempted to take Philosophically, Plato was influenced by a tradition of scepti- pencil and paper and draw it. Our attempts will of course fall cism, including the scepticism of his teacher Socrates, who is short. Plato would say that peoples’ attempts to recreate the also the star of Plato’s dialogues. What was obvious to many of Form will end up being a pale facsimile of the perfect Idea, just the early Greek philosophers was that we live in a world which as everything in this world is an imperfect representation of its is not an easy source of true, ie, eternal, unchanging knowledge. perfect Form. The Idea or Form of a triangle and the drawing The world is constantly undergoing change. The seasons reflect we come up with is a way of comparing the perfect and imper- change. Nothing is ever permanent: buildings crumble, people, fect. How good our drawing is will depend on our ability to animals and trees live, and then die. Even the present is deceiv- recognise the Form of Triangle. Although no one has ever seen a ing: our senses of sight, touch and taste can let us down from perfect triangle, for Plato this is not a problem. If we can con- time to time. What looks to be water on the desert horizon is in ceive the Idea or Form of a perfect triangle in our mind, then the fact a mirage. Or what I think of as sweet at one time may seem Idea of Triangle must exist. sour the next. Heraclitus, a pre-Socratic philosopher, claimed The Forms are not limited to geometry. According to Plato, that we can never step into the same river twice. for any conceivable thing or property there is a corresponding Form, a perfect example of that thing or property. The list is My Mommy’s Cookies almost inexhaustible. Tree, House, Mountain, Man, Woman, By Plato, aged 4 Ship, Cloud, Horse, Dog, Table and Chair, would all be exam- ples of putatively independently-existing abstract perfect Ideas. The general consensus is that Plato’s philosophy of Forms was Plato says that true and reliable knowledge rests only with a natural by-product of his friendship with Socrates and his those who can comprehend the true reality behind the world of upbringing in an environment conducive to philosophical everyday experience. In order to perceive the world of the thought. However, a newly recovered dialogue shows that Forms, individuals must undergo a difficult education. This is Plato’s first brush with Forms was in his mom’s kitchen: also true of Plato’s philosopher-kings, who are required to per- ceive the Form of Good(ness) in order to be well-informed “Mommy,why do we have to cut each cookie into a crescent?” rulers. We must be taught to recall this knowledge of the Forms, “Because, Plato, all kourabiedes are crescent-shaped.” since it is already present in a person’s mind, due to their soul “Why?” apparently having been in the world of the Forms before they “So that people will know they’re eating a kourabiede and not an were born. Someone wanting to do architecture, for example, amygthalota.” would be required to recall knowledge of the Forms of Building, “Why?” House, Brick, Tension, etc. The fact that this person may have “You tell me. What do all these cookies have in common?” absolutely no idea about building design is irrelevant. On this “They all have the same shape.” basis, if you can’t recall the necessary knowledge then you’re “Why do they have the same shape, Plato?” obviously not suited to be an architect, or a king. Not everyone “Because they come from the same cutter?” is suited to be king in the same way as not everyone is suited to “That’s right.” mathematics. Conversely, a very high standard in a particular “So everybody knows they're all kourabiedes because they come trade suggests knowledge of its Forms. The majority of people from the same cookie cutter?” cannot be educated about the nature of the Forms because the “Yes. Pass the cloves, please.” Forms cannot be discovered through education, only recalled. “Why?” Toexplain our relationship to the world of the Forms, in the “Because I said so! Now please stop eating the sugar,you know it Republic Plato uses the analogy of people who spend their makes you hyperactive.” whole lives living in a cave [see box on page 9]. All they ever © COURTNEY GIBBONS 2012 see are shadows on the walls created by their campfire. Com- Courtney Gibbons was a student at the University of New Haven. pared with the reality of the world of the Forms, real physical

6 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 PLATO PORTRAIT © ATHAMOS STRADIS 2012 objects and events are analogous to being only shadows. Plato Who are the special people who can recognise the Forms? For also takes the opportunity to use the cave analogy as a political Plato the answer is straightforward: the ideal ruler is a philoso- statement. Only the people who have the ability to step out pher-king, because only philosophers have the ability to dis- into the sunlight and see (recall) the true reality (the Forms) cern the Forms. Plato goes on to say that it is only when such a should rule. Clearly Plato was not a fan of Greek democracy. person comes to power that the citizens of the state will have No doubt his aristocratic background and the whims of the opportunity to step out of the cave and see the light. Athenian politics contributed to his view, especially as the © DAVID MACINTOSH 2012 people voted to execute his mentor Socrates. David Macintosh is a professional educator in New South Wales, and Plato leaves no doubt that only special people are fit to rule. a regular participant in academic and non-academic philosophy forums.

May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 7 Picking A Fight With Plato Ed Fraser argues that the theory of recollection presented by Socrates in the Meno is circular.

he primary objective of Plato’s Meno is an inquiry into enquire into what they have forgotten. Since this will include all the nature of virtue. Accordingly, Socrates, acting as knowledge, enquiry is secured in very general terms. Tusual as Plato’s mouthpiece, and Meno, a student of In defence of his position, Socrates refers to what he describes the sophists, attempt to answer the question ‘What is virtue?’ as a “glorious truth” – namely, that the soul of man is immortal. Their initial failure to understand what virtue is prompts It might die and be reborn, but it is never destroyed. He reasons Meno to ask whether they should even suppose that an answer that, since the soul is immortal and has been born again many is possible. The problem is, how do you find something, such times, it must have seen all things that exist in this world or in as virtue, when you don’t know what it is you’re looking for? If the world below or in the world of the Forms and has knowledge you already know what it is, then you don’t need to find it; but of them all. In this way, the soul has learned everything that if you don’t know what it is, how will you know when you have there is to know (i.e., everything that can be enquired into). found it? This problem of finding a definition of something is Although everything the soul has learnt has been forgotten, known as ‘the paradox of enquiry’. during the process of enquiry someone might come to recollect Socrates argues that in order for a person to enquire into something that they had previously known, thereby ‘relearning’ something it must be knowable. Meno’s criticism is in effect some piece of knowledge – say of the nature of virtue. that in order for a person to enquire into something it must Socrates provides a demonstration. An uneducated slave boy also be known. He argues that if the object in question is not of Meno’s is shown to be capable of recognising the right known – in other words, if the person doesn’t know what answer to a mathematical problem that he has never (in this they’re looking for – then they cannot begin their enquiry at life) heard before (Meno 81a-86b). Socrates is keen to stress all; for how can one enquire into the nature of ‘x’ without that the boy arrives at the right answer by himself through a knowing what ‘x’ is? Meno is also concerned with the possibil- series of questions. Since the boy was not taught the right ity that enquiry is never-ending, since even if one were to answer, Socrates proposes that he expressed an opinion that stumble across the right account, one might not know that it was already in him. He argues on these grounds that the soul was the right account, (Meno 80D). Socrates focuses primarily already contains an array of true opinions, gathered, as it were, on the first part of Meno’s dilemma: how enquiry might be from a previous life, which can be newly aroused though started. The difficulty can be rephrased as being that enquiry simple questioning. In this respect, one can enquire into what into what is known is unnecessary, and enquiry into what is one is ignorant of in virtue of the fact that the true opinions are unknown is impossible. ‘stirred up’ into your mind through questioning. Socrates refers to the problem as a ‘tired dispute’, and sug- gests that it might be solved upon a proper examination into Circular Knowledge the nature of knowledge and enquiry. Specifically, he proposes I do not intend to argue that Socrates’ theory of recollection that everything a person knows or can come to know was previ- does not work as a solution to the paradox of enquiry. Instead I ously known by them. Although it has subsequently been for- intend to demonstrate that the theory of recollection doesn’t gotten, it may be ‘relearned’. This is the Platonic/Socratic work generally. Todo this I shall make three claims: theory of recollection. In this sense Socrates accepts that a person cannot enquire into what they genuinely do not know, but he 1.) That in order for his theory of recollection to be coherent avoids the paradox of enquiry by maintaining that they can and therefore potentially resolve Meno’s paradox of enquiry, Socrates must be able to demonstrate that the slave boy is in fact recollecting some previous true opinions rather than learn- ing new knowledge by using general reasoning. 2.) That Socrates attempts to establish recollection by employ- ing the notion of what I shall describe as an ‘immortal and knowledge-giving soul’. 3.) That the reasoning he uses to promote his ‘immortal and knowledge-giving soul’ is circular.

The first of my claims is obviously a requirement for Socrates. His theory turns on whether or not the slave boy learns anything new. In particular, Socrates needs to show that the true opinions arrived at were already-learned forgotten truths. The second claim seems equally uncontroversial. Socrates is able to take the slave boy to have arrived at true relearned opin- ions because he has already introduced the notion of an immor-

8 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 tal and knowledge-giving soul. Given this notion, if a person ing soul on circular grounds. comes to the correct answer to a problem of which they have no We may draw an analogy with a challenge made against experience (in this life), it can be reasonable to suppose that it’s Descartes. In his Meditations Six, Descartes proposes that every- because they have relearned something they already knew. thing that we clearly and distinctly perceive is true with certainty Now for the tricky part. I think Socrates does not assume because it is guaranteed by the existence of God. But in Medita- the existence of an immortal and knowledge-giving soul. tions Four, he has already proposed that we know that God exists Rather, I believe that he sets it out as a possibility to be exam- because we clearly and distinctly perceive that he exists, and ined, and attempts to persuade us that this is the case. I put it whatever we clearly and distinctly perceive is true with certainty. to you that the slave boy example is intended to demonstrate The reasoning here is circular – one cannot at the same time that such a soul exists. In other words, Socrates draws the infer the existence of God because one clearly and distinctly per- grounds for his notion of an immortal and knowledge-giving ceives it, and infer the truth of what one clearly and distinctly soul out of the slave boy example, because he believes that it is perceives from the existence of God. This is sometimes referred the best explanation for the apparently relearned true opinions to as the ‘Cartesian Circle’. he observes in the boy. But it strikes me that Socrates is not I am suggesting that Socrates here commits what we might entitled to use what he sees as the relearned true opinions of call the ‘Socratic Circle’. At the same time that he seems to say the slave boy to prove the existence of an immortal knowl- that he can establish that the slave boy’s true opinions are edge-providing soul, because the true opinions themselves relearned on the basis that he has an immortal knowledge-pro- cannot be established as relearned until they are proven to viding soul, he also seems to say that we know the slave boy has a have originated from such a soul. The point is that if the knowledge-providing soul on the basis that he has relearned true ‘relearned’ opinions noticed in the slave boy are supposed to opinions. This reasoning is circular in a similar way to Descartes’. offer evidence for an immortal knowledge-providing soul, then This has severe consequences, because unless Socrates can prove Socrates’ reasoning is circular here, because the existence of that the slave boy comes by the right answer in virtue of already such a soul is offered to account for the origin of the opinions. knowing it in a past life, then the problem of enquiry is not Toput it another way, having initially proposed that the true solved by the theory of recollection, and the Platonic theory of opinions of the slave boy originated out of the otherworld knowledge cannot get off the ground. experiences of the immortal knowledge-providing soul, © EDWARD FRASER 2012 Socrates is not then in the position to say that they offer evi- Edward Fraser graduated in 2010 with a degree in philosophy from dence for the existence of that soul. Thus Socrates draws his King’s College London. He’s the creator and co-host of philosophical evidence for the existence of an immortal knowledge-provid- podcast ‘The Thirst’ (www.thethirstpodcast.wordpress.com).

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, as told in the Republic, Book VII, is a fable related by Socrates to illustrate the gap Plato perceives between the transient world as it appears to us, and the unchanging world of the Forms, which exists behind or beyond appearances. In an extended metaphor, Plato/Socrates considers dwellers in a cave. All their lives they’ve been chained up so that they cannot move their heads to look around. The entrance to the cave – the exit to the daylight of truth – is behind them, and so is a fire, with a walkway in front of it. People walk along this path, or things are paraded on it, and the shadows of these people and things are cast by the fire onto the wall in front of the prisoners. Because they have no experience which might suggest a different interpretation, the cave-dwellers assume that the shadows they see moving on the cave wall are the reality of the people and things. This idea seems to be confirmed by the whispers of voices or other noises they hear echoing around the cave in time with the movements or gestures of the shadows. In an analogous way (the argument goes), we assume that the world we experience is absolute reality, never imagin- ing that there might be a hidden reality which is the source of our flickering experiences, but which is quite different from them. Socrates goes on to relate how one day one of the dwellers in darkness is dragged up out of the cave to the light of truth. Plato clearly is referring to himself here, as going beyond appearances to perceive the world of the Forms – the highest of which, the dazzling ‘sun’ of the Forms, is the Form of (the) Good. He has Socrates say of this Form “Once [the Good] is perceived, the conclusion must follow that, for all things, this is the cause of whatever is right and good: in daylight real things/people the visible world it gives birth to light and to the lord of fire shadows light, while it is itself sovereign in the intelligible world [of Forms], and the parent of intelligence and truth. Without having had a vision of this Form no one can act with wis- dom, either in his own life or in matters of the state.” Plato tells us that the freed man, having seen the truth, will return to tell his former companions what he has experienced. Plato also thinks they won’t believe him, will abuse him for his foolishness, and will kill him if he tries to free others. Nevertheless, for Plato it is the duty of the enlightened to try and convince the endarkened of the deception they suffer under; and he goes on to explain philosophers why the philosopher, who has knowledge of the Good, prisoners should rule over those who do not have such knowledge.

May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 9 Plato’s Just State Chris Wright ponders Plato’s masterplan. ne of the purposes of Plato’s Republic is to put forth a is “the having and doing of one’s own and what belongs to one- conception of the ‘just state’. Plato describes how self” (434a). Excess and deficiency of any kind are unjust. In Osuch a state would be organized, who would govern it, this formulation the Platonic definition of justice seems plausi- what sort of education the children would have, and so on. He ble. A thief, for example, is unjust because he wants to have goes into great detail, laying out ideas that may at times strike what is not his own. A doctor who does not care about curing the modern reader as wrongheaded, petty, or even immoral. his patients of illnesses can be called unjust because he is disre- Sir Karl Popper argued in The Open Society and Its Enemies that garding his proper role. A murderer acts unjustly since he Plato’s ideal state is totalitarian, with little freedom of expres- deprives his victim of that which rightly belongs to him, namely sion allowed, little diversity, and a perverse commitment to a his life. In general, unjust people either do not realize the Spartan-like regimentation of social life. Others see evidence virtues and duties proper to their situation in life, or treat some- of democracy in Plato’s description, for instance in the egali- one worse than he deserves. Similarly, an unjust state fails to tarianism that characterizes certain aspects of his educational accomplish the functions of a state. According to Plato, these program. I want to ask to what extent Plato’s vision is still rele- functions of the state include making possible the conditions vant – whether it has anything valuable to say to us. And is the under which everyone can feed, clothe and shelter themselves, Platonic state just or unjust? Is it entirely impracticable, or are as well as seek the Good. there elements that can and should be put into practice? How Plato’s conception of justice is informed by his conviction adequate is the theory of justice on which it is founded? After that everything in nature is part of a hierarchy, and that nature discussing these questions I will briefly consider the form a is ideally a vast harmony, a cosmic symphony, every species and modern version of this utopia might take. every individual serving a purpose. In this vision, anarchy is the supreme vice, the most unnatural and unjust state of affairs. Plato’s Definition of Justice The just state, then, like nature, is hierarchical: individuals are “Todo one’s own business and not to ranked according to their aptitudes, and definitively placed in be a busybody is justice.” (Republic the social hierarchy. 433b.) Although the modern reader The individual soul, too, is hierarchical: the appetitive part is may find it odd, this is the definition inferior to the spirited part, which is inferior to the rational. Yet of justice Plato offers. The idea is each has a necessary role to play. Reason should govern the indi- that justice consists in fulfilling one’s vidual, but the appetites must also to an extent be heeded if the proper role – realizing one’s poten- person’s soul is to be harmonious tial whilst not overstepping it by and not in conflict with itself. doing what is contrary to one’s And if every aspect of the soul nature. This applies both to the accomplishes its task well, or just state and to the just individ- fittingly, the result is neces- ual. In the just state, each class sarily a ‘moderate’ and and each individual has a spe- ordered state of affairs. The cific set of duties, a set of obliga- virtuous individual has a well- tions to the community which, if ordered soul, which is to say that everyone fulfils them, will result he knows what justice is and in a harmonious whole. When a acts according to his knowl- person does what he is sup- edge. He knows his place posed to do, he receives what- in the state; he knows ever credit and remuneration what his aptitudes are he deserves, and if he fails to and he puts them into do his task, he is practice. He also appropriately pun- adheres to the dic- ished. tates of reason, doing Thus justice everything in mod- eration. The Platonic worldview is quite foreign to the modern lib- eral democratic world. We are accustomed to

10 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 a dynamic, free, at times chaotic society, which knows almost mote anarchy and prevent his subjects from seeking the Good nothing of rigid hierarchies. People are not ranked according to and living in harmony with themselves and the community. their intrinsic value or their value to society, and any philoso- The tyrant upsets the natural order of things. phy that reeks of a caste system is decisively rejected. We are Another illustration of the difference in our outlooks is in not committed to analogies between nature and society; and we our conceptions of the ideal or just person. According to Plato, do not think of the world as a harmony, even ideally. We like the ideal person is a philosopher, since his wisdom means his order, but we do not consider it supreme among values. We soul is in complete harmony with itself. The philosopher’s admire ambitious, driven people, rather than those who are at rational faculty governs his passions and appetites, never allow- peace with themselves or do everything in moderation. In gen- ing them free rein, but still respecting their claims on him and eral, our culture places little emphasis on a specific ideal, choos- indulging them when expedient. He has knowledge of himself ing instead to censure types of behavior which interfere with and society; he knows what it is to be virtuous; he has a certain other people’s pursuit of happiness. Plato, however, would con- amount of equanimity, and he never loses control over himself. sider our ideal state unjust, decadent, anarchical. By contrast, Plato’s unjust person is divided against himself, Plato lived in an Athens that to his chagrin was in danger of torn between his passions and appetites, and has no respect for losing its cultural and military preeminence, and was succumb- reason, which alone could unify his soul such that he would be ing to disintegrating influences from abroad and from within. an individual in the literal sense of the word ‘in-dividual’. He had lived through the terrible time of the Peloponnesian Our notion of the ideal person is far less specific than War with Sparta, and the Thirty Tyrants, and therefore had Plato’s. Like Plato’s, it does, to an extent, incorporate the intimate experience of the horrors of anarchy. In short, he saw notion of ‘virtue’; but for us virtue is conceived as treating an older, supposedly better, world crumbling around him, and others well rather than as functioning healthily within a com- he wanted to understand what had gone wrong and how it munity. Our ideal can be called more could be fixed. The result was that he emphasized order and ‘relational’, in that it emphasizes how homogeneity, and upheld the claims of the state over the others should be treated rather than claims of the individual, while thinking that in a just state full emphasizing the character of one’s of just individuals, the laws of the former would harmonize psyche. with the desires of the latter. For Plato, justice was to be Given these dif- sought in the old, in the static – the assimilation of the individ- ferences, one ual into the community – not in the new or the dynamic. obvious ques- While Plato did value freedom, he did so much less than we moderns do, as is evidenced in his not emphasizing it in his discussions of justice. Thus, despite whatever superficial similari- tion is ties there may be between Plato’s idea of justice which concept and our own, they are fundamentally different, since his world- of justice (or view is diametrically opposed to ours. In a particular case, such more fundamen- as that of a murder, Plato might judge as we do (largely tally, which worldview) is because we seem to have intuitive ideas of how humans ought better, Plato’s or ours? I have to be treated). However, both his explicit definitions of justice elaborated on neither, merely and the deeper intuitions that inspire his definitions differ sketching them. Still, let me from ours. We conceive of justice as oriented around ideas of suggest an answer: neither individual freedom and the priority of the individual over the Plato’s nor our own is totally sat- community, and we consider it sometimes not only permissible isfactory, but each has its but even meritorious to disobey the state’s laws if they violate strengths. The most defen- certain intuitions about individual rights. Plato’s concept of sible notion of justice, justice is instead inspired by his conviction that the collective socially or individually, would be a combination of the takes ethical precedence over the individual, that there is a two, selecting the strengths from each and reconciling cosmic order into which each person is supposed to fit, and them. It would emphasize both the importance of community that virtue, and to an extent duty, is far more important than and the importance of the individual, while succumbing neither rights. to the potential totalitarianism of the Republic, nor to the exces- The differences become apparent when we look at larger sive individualism of modern culture. In the following I’ll briefly scales than individuals’ transgressions. Many would agree with describe Plato’s utopia, then consider if it would be desirable to Plato that theft is unjust or that the professional who ignores put it into practice. his duties can be called ‘unjust’, and also that tyranny is unjust. But in this last case our respective judgments are based on dif- Plato’s Ideal State ferent reasons. We would say that the tyrant’s injustice consists Every reader of the Republic is told that Plato’s intention in in his suppressing freedom, killing innocent people, and disre- discussing the just state is to illuminate the nature of the just garding democracy and self-determination. Plato, on the other soul, for he argues that they are analogous. The state is the hand, would say that the tyrant is unjust insofar as his acts pro- soul writ large, so to speak. For example, the divisions of the

May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 11 state correspond to divisions of the soul. But since the soul is secret which only the rulers know, or there will be a further danger of our difficult to analyze, in the dialogue Socrates says that he will herd, as they may be termed, breaking out into rebellion.” first speculate on the state, and then rely on his speculations to illuminate the nature of justice in the individual. More congenial to modern sentiment is Plato’s suggestion Superficially, it appears that the lengthy discussion of the that women in the guardian class should receive the same edu- state is therefore primarily an interpretative device. Clearly, cation as men, so that the best of them can assist in war and though, it is more than that. Plato may not have believed that governance. There is no private property or money except his utopia would work in practice, or even that it would be insofar as it is necessary, among the lower classes; therefore desirable to institute some of his more radical suggestions, but there will be no disputes about what belongs to whom – just as he certainly attributed some value to his discussion indepen- there will be no disputes about which women belong to whom, dent of its illustrative function. Judging by Socrates’ language, and who one’s children are. In general, the goal Plato is aiming it’s reasonable to suppose that Plato would have liked to have at is that everyone thinks of everyone else as a member of their seen some of his ideas actually implemented in a city-state. He family, such that there is little or no strife between people and was dissatisfied with the city-states of his day, and was propos- they all desire the same thing – which is harmony, temperance, ing an alternative. So let’s look at its details. gentleness toward fellow-citizens and harshness toward people In Plato’s ideal state there are three major classes, corre- from other states – a unified front on all issues, as it were. The sponding to the three parts of the soul. The guardians, who are health of the community is the overriding principle in all philosophers, govern the city; the auxiliaries are soldiers who spheres of life. All of Plato’s radical prescriptions follow from defend it; and the lowest class comprises the producers (farmers, that one principle. artisans, etc). The guardians and auxiliaries have the same edu- cation, which begins with music and literature and ends with Sedition & Subversion gymnastics. The arts are censored for educational purposes: What are we to make of these ideas? What should we take for example, any poetic writings which attribute ignoble from them? Do they represent a mere historical curiosity – a doings to the gods cannot be taught. Only poetry which nour- way of gaining insight into Plato’s mind or into his culture – or ishes the budding virtues of the pupils can be part of the cur- do they have independent philosophical and political merit? riculum. Similarly, musical modes which sound sorrowful, soft, My opinion is that their obvious totalitarianism makes it a or feminine, are banished from the education of the guardians. very good thing that Plato’s just state was never constructed. This apparently leaves only the Dorian and Phrygian modes, This is where my fidelity to modern ideologies shows itself. I of which . Socrates approves because they incite the listener to think that Hegel was right in his assessment of liberalism: it courage, temperance, and harmonious living. Certain instru- has so to speak ‘discovered’ the importance of subjectivity, and ments, such as the flute, are also forbidden from the ideal city- thus serves as a needed corrective to totalitarian excesses. The state, as are certain poetic meters, since Socrates associates individual is not ethically subordinate to the community; her them with vice. health, and especially her freedom, are no less important than Indeed, then, life in Plato’s ideal state has affinities with life communal harmony. Indeed, unless a person feels free, he under a totalitarian government. The laws which Socrates sug- cannot be psychologically healthy. gests are repressive. People are allowed to have only one occu- Plato underestimates the value of self-determination: its pation – namely that for which they are best suited by nature. foundational importance to self-respect and hence to justice, Evidently there is no division between the public and the pri- even in his sense of the term. Plato’s guardians perhaps exhibit vate. Only what is conducive to temperate living is encour- the virtues and enjoy the satisfactions of self-determination; but aged, and excess and vice of any kind are strongly discouraged. everyone else in Plato’s utopia is to be forced by the philoso- Neither wealth nor poverty is permitted, as each leads to vice. pher-king(s) to live their lives in a fundamentally unfree (non Plato’s thoughts on women and children may be even more self-determining) way. They will thus lack complete self-respect horrifying to the average liberal. He argues via Socrates that and contentment: the mere knowledge that they are in an infe- the traditional form of the family should be done away with. rior position relative to others will breed discontent, which will Men should have women and children in common, such that upset their psychological equilibrium, the harmony of their fac- no man knows who his children are or has excessive love for ulties and desires with each other, and with their place in the one woman in particular. Even mothers are not allowed to world. In other words it will set each of them at war with him- know who their children are. Their children are taken from self and with the state. Accordingly, as Plato himself implies, them after birth, and they are given other children to suckle as this will make for unjust individuals. By denying most of its citi- long as they have milk. zens true freedom – the opportunity to discover themselves and Plato’s breeding principles sound ominously like the Nazi their talents unhindered by oppressive laws promulgated by an idea, and Spartan practice, of killing weak and deformed oppressive regime – Plato’s utopia will make their dissatisfac- infants. He says: tion with themselves and the community inevitable, which is bad not only in itself but also because it means people are “the best of either sex should be united with the best as often [as possible], unjust, ie self-divided. Thus the Platonic utopia makes impossi- and the inferior with the inferior as seldom as possible; and they should ble the very virtues it was meant to promote. rear the offspring of the one sort of union, but not of the other, if the flock The need for recognition is a basic psychological need. is to be maintained in first-rate condition. Now these goings-on must be a People want to recognize themselves in their activities, in the

12 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 world, in other people’s reactions to them. But no one who is Marx’s classless utopia is not as blatantly incompatible with conscious of oppressive restrictions on his behavior can think Platonism as it might seem, since, for one thing, the Marxist that his deepest sense of himself is being recognized by the definition of ‘class’ is very different from the Platonic. Plato community which censors him. Rather, he may be full of incorporates a fusion of political and economic criteria: the resentment, tormented by repressed desires, and desperate to lowest class is involved in productive economic activities but break free of the shackles and spontaneously affirm himself – to has no political power, while the highest class has all the politi- actualize his full, rich sense of who he is and wants to be. No cal power, but no economic activity. For Marx, on the other one can feel good about himself unless his activities grow out of hand, the definition of class is exclusively economic, based on his own ideals and self-perceptions. They must emerge organi- the group’s role in the process of production. For Marx there cally from his spontaneous sense of himself. Genuine recogni- are basically two classes, namely the capitalists and the workers. tion is impossible except on the basis of freedom, so any social My points are, first, that rather than contradicting Plato, order that does not allow freedom among its participants is Marx adopts a different starting-point. Second, while Marxist inherently unstable, having the potential for rebellion built into ideology does contradict Platonism in its classless and popular- it. Every major culture in history, then, has been erected on ist ideals, it does so on the basis of a deep sympathy with somewhat tenuous and transient foundations; but Plato’s utopia Plato’s goals. Both are concerned with the health and whole- in particular would soon collapse. ness of the community, the durability of its social structures, Plato was right that the interests of the individual ultimately the happiness of its citizens, and the justice of its political and coincide with the interests of the community, for a community economic arrangements. Tothat extent, communism is a is only as healthy as the people who participate in it, and vice descendant of Plato’s republicanism: it too is an ideology built versa. Where he went wrong was in failing to understand the on the conviction that the community is an organic whole and prerequisites of the self-harmony that he rightly thought con- not merely an aggregate of individuals, and therefore that stituted individual and communal happiness – the prerequisites social structures – the relational ties between people – take pri- being freedom, and the perception that one’s sense of self is ority over the behavior of atomized individuals, both in a sci- appreciated by others. Modern liberal ideologies over-com- entific analysis of society, and also in the formulation of an eth- pensate for this deficiency in Plato. They have an impover- ical ideal. Where Marx’s ideal state differs from Plato’s is not in ished view of what freedom is and why it is good, for they exalt its goal or inspiration, then, but in its means of realizing its the concept of an isolated, ahistorical individual who needs goal, or more accurately, in the structures it posits as constitu- nothing but protection from other people rather than genuine tive of that goal – viz, democracy, universal economic and and durable ties with them. Protection is of secondary impor- political cooperation, the absence of coercive social mecha- tance: the essence of freedom, the reason why it is desired in nisms, and so forth. These political structures have more in the first place, is that it is inseparable from interpersonal union common with liberalism than Platonism, as they place great – from mutual recognition of each person’s self-determined emphasis on the freedom of the individual. activities as being his, as being him. In a truly free society there Marx does reject liberal talk of rights and the rule of law, but would be no atomization, and no artificial legal barriers to he does so precisely because he understands that such talk is interpersonal understanding and recognition, to communal symptomatic of the incomplete realization of the liberal goal of self-realization. People live in and through the community. Far self-determination. Toachieve his purer vision of liberalism, from needing protection from it, they feel deprived without it. Marx thinks that capitalism, together with its ideologies exalting private property with its corresponding laws, rights, and so on, Other Ideal States must be transcended, as it suppresses and dehumanizes people. Socrates remarks in the Republic that although his (Plato’s) Despite the differences between Plato’s conception of jus- utopia may be unrealizable, it is useful as an ideal or a standard tice and our own, elements of his philosophy can be reconciled by which we can criticize existing institutions. While I disagree with elements of our liberal democratic ideology. I also sug- with Plato’s version of utopia, I agree that it is a worthy task to gested that Plato’s ‘communitarian’ intuition was largely right, formulate social ideals. In doing so, we at least posit an ideal even if his means of realizing it were dangerously wrong. Also, state we can strive to realize, even if in its final details this is the ideal individual should indeed be self-unified and have self- impossible. With that in mind, I suggest that something like control, and Plato was right that, on the whole, such individu- properly democratic communism is the ideal we should use to als will not arise except in socially harmonious conditions. critique the present, since it reconciles Plato’s emphasis on the Marx retained some of Plato’s intuitions while discarding community with the modern emphasis on individual freedom. the totalitarian doctrines which would make the achievement Indeed, Marx’s ideal of a communist utopia is not merely of Plato’s ‘perfect community’ impossible. I think we should do ‘Marxist’; it is heir to both the Platonic and the liberal utopias. as Marx did, at least in theory (even if in practice his ‘followers’ This statement may seem paradoxical, if only because Platon- deviated far from his ideals), and adopt the liberal features of ism and liberalism are diametrically opposed, as we have seen. Plato’s notion of social justice while casting off its totalitarian But consider what is involved in Marx’s ideal society. First of all, undertones. If we did so, I suspect life would become a little classes would not exist. That is, Marx claims in the Communist better than it is now, in our confused and atomized world. Manifesto (1848) that after a period of state socialism and redis- © CHRISTOPHER C. WRIGHT 2012 tribution of wealth, separate classes will no longer exist and the Chris Wright studied postgraduate philosophy at the University of state will no longer be needed. Missouri - St Louis.

May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 13 Addicts, Mythmakers and Philosophers Alan Brody explains Plato’s/Socrates’ understanding of habitually bad behavior

had held up his right hand and asked “See this?” He evaluates what to do, so that someone who previously decided showed me gnarled and maimed fingers. Thad told me not to drink can come to temporarily think it’s okay to do so. Tthat while he was flying his plane into Turkey, the After I explained how this kind of change of thought could pro- Turkish air force forced him to land, having gotten wind that he duce a motive for drinking, Thad saw how his ability to endure was running drugs. They jailed him, and in an attempt to extract suffering couldn’t be counted on to guarantee abstinence. a confession, his jailers broke his fingers. He didn’t confess. Thad bribed his way out of jail. Eventually he came to the Addicts as Willing Participants drug treatment center where I was working, to get help with Addiction busts up what matters: the condition is capable of his drinking problem. (Thad and other patient names are pseu- creating urges and motivations which bring about highly sig- donyms.) After discussing addiction as involving compulsive nificant losses to a person’s well-being in spite of the person’s behavior, we concluded that Thad was suffering from alco- standing preference not to live like that. It’s possible that an holism. Knowing he would be better off not drinking, Thad addict is able, at times, to control the urge to use; but the committed himself to abstinence. He told me that he didn’t addict also might not be able to prevent an urge to use from need to go to Alcoholics Anonymous for support, explaining spontaneously arising and motivating. Other conditions, for that if he could resist caving in from torture he could certainly instance bipolar or obsessive-compulsive disorders, can also resist whatever discomfort he would experience from not create self-regulatory failures, so that episodes of self-destruc- drinking. Thad thought that being able to follow through with tive behavior are willingly engaged in which contravene the his resolve was simply a matter of having the ability to resist person’s general preference not to behave like that. Further- succumbing to how bad it would feel to not drink. more an appearance, at times, of control – intentionally cutting When Thad came in for his next appointment he looked down, or temporarily stopping – can mislead the addict and pained, shocked and confused. He told me that in spite of his others into believing that the addiction really is under control. decision to remain abstinent, he drank. It happened at the air- The ability of the addict to believe that he/she is addicted also port while he was waiting for his friend to arrive. Thad couldn’t typically becomes compromised. understand how he would do such a thing, given his ability to Well, why not just hold that addicts abandon their resolve to handle pain when sticking to a resolution. I explained how a be abstinent simply because they change their minds, and not compulsive condition such as alcoholism can change how one through some sort of compulsion? It’s common to change one’s

On a ship, tied to the mast: Ulysses and the Sirens by John William Waterhouse

14 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 mind when faced with temptation. Sometimes the choice to go ahead with Hey, Yeah, the temptation is the result of a cost- great leaving it’s my benefit evaluation – in other words, it party! 27,572,315th! seems worthwhile to do it. At other times a person might gratify their desire or urge without entertaining any qualms or even thoughts about it. So although an addict’s habitual behavior might be atypical, rather than seeing it as a result of a compulsion they’re not strong enough to fight against, why not see their addictive behavior as some- thing done in a willing manner, because the person feels like doing it, and/or they regard it as worth doing? This willingness model (my terminol- ogy) has its roots in the analysis of embracing temptation which is found in Plato’s dialogue Protagoras. Contempo- rary philosophers such as Herbert Fin- Eternal recurrence? garette in Heavy Drinking: The Myth Of See ‘The Devil’s Gambit’ on p.16 Alcoholism As A Disease, and recently, PARTY IN HELL © ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/ART12321 Piers Benn in ‘Can Addicts Help It?’ in Philosophy Now issue 80, they ignore the order (probably because they can’t hear it). In have also argued in support of such a model. I believe that the Socratic/Platonic analysis of what we think of as ‘yielding to understanding addiction requires appreciating elements of that temptation’, temptation plays the same role as enchantment in model, as well as conceiving of addiction as a disorder involving the story, in the sense that temptation has a power to deceive a compulsive process which undermines the ability to regulate someone into willingly choosing it as best thing to do. one’s behavior. Aristotle thought that by asserting that when we gratify our desires for what tempts we are still doing what we think best, Model Behavior Socrates was denying the existence of akrasia – ‘weakness of In the Protagoras, Socrates discusses the nature of, and chal- will’, or a failure of self-restraint. The denial of both compul- lenges to, self-mastery (ie self-control). When faced with a sivity and of weakness of will in explaining addiction has choice, Socrates tells us, human nature means we want to do resulted in a willingness model commonly referred to as the what we think is best. So, he argues, if we believe we know moral model of addiction. On this view, what the addict does what the good (the best) thing to do is, and it is accessible to can be explained in terms of Socrates’ willingness model and us, we will do the good. However, says Socrates, things which an addict’s immoral character: ie, they want to do it, and care tempt us can have the power to alter our perception or under- more about satisfying their addiction than the consequences of standing of their value, making them deceptively appear to be doing so. The addict’s moral deficits reside in their motiva- what is best. Consequently, we choose the temptation as the tions, as illustrated in the accusation: “If you cared more about best thing to do. The experience of going along with tempta- peoples’ safety than drinking, you wouldn’t drink and drive.” tion is not, Socrates argues, one in which the person protests Here, the individual is judged to be morally deficient for not or fights against its unreasonableness while being dragged prioritizing peoples’ safety over their own desire to drink. along into gratifying it. For Socrates, ‘yielding to temptation’ Support for the moral and other willingness models has been is not being unwillingly overpowered, but is the experience of garnered from the fact that some addicts have stopped or limited being a willing participant choosing what is at that moment their drug use when they have had good enough reason for wrongly thought to be best. This is also the essence of the will- doing so – that is, when they regard doing so as important. For ingness model of addictive behavior. example, it is not unusual for women to stop smoking while A good way to understand it is by looking at how Homer pregnant in order to protect the fetus, but to resume smoking depicts Odysseus’s mental state after hearing the Sirens. In afterwards. Also, addicts will often limit when they engage in Homer’s Odyssey, the Sirens’ singing was said to be so beautiful their addiction, for instance, not at work, or not around certain that it would enchant sailors, who would then pilot their ships people. Addicts might also demonstrate an ability to limit their towards the deadly rocks from which the Sirens sang. Odysseus drug use, e.g., their drinking, just to prove that they can success- orders his men to tie him to the ship’s mast so that he can listen fully control their habit. Some addicts may decide that their to their song while his men row past them with wax blocking addiction no longer works for them, and stop using completely. their ears. Through the Sirens’ enchantment, Odysseus Furthermore, it is often claimed, that even if there are genetic or becomes hooked and orders his men to sail toward them, in biological factors causing an addict to have strong urges, control spite of having been told of the doom it will bring. Luckily, over them still depend on what the addict thinks it is worthwhile

May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 15 to do, even when the urges are intense. Urges “incline but do ability to avoid being deceived about what is the best choice. not necessitate,” to use an expression of Leibniz’s. For example, when Thad was at the airport, he became willing to drink because for some reason he thought it was the best Simplicity Itself option, in spite of his resolve to remain abstinent. His failure The willingness model of addiction has been presented as a of ability/knowledge was manifested by his becoming willing simple way to capture the nature of addiction, how it moti- to drink, and doing so. His preference was therefore ineffective vates, and how it manifests experientially and behaviorally. But in preventing the relapse. is its simplicity a good reason to believe it? In From A Logical Point Of View (1953), the philosopher The Devil’s Gambit W.V.O. Quine beautifully articulates the rationale involved It might be thought that when an addict expresses a com- when he states that “we adopt, at least insofar as we are reason- mitment to stop an addiction, but doesn’t, they’re expressing able, the simplest conceptual scheme into which the disor- either an unresolved ambivalence or a resolution to stop at dered fragments of raw experience can be fitted and arranged” some later time (as seen in Augustine’s prayer, “God grant me (p.16). The simplicity of the willingness model, then, might chastity and continence – but not yet”). If so, continued drug appear to give it a big advantage over any analysis of addiction use (for example) might not be due to an inadequacy over self- in terms of a compulsive condition or other disability (for regulation, but a result of choice. Toappreciate how choices example, as an illness or disease). But we are in danger of being enacted willingly can mask an impaired control of compulsive seduced by a love of theoretical sparseness, misleading us into processes, consider the following story. violating another important methodological maxim, attributed One day in Hell the Devil approached a man who loved the to Einstein, namely, that a theory should be ‘as simple as possi- drinking parties there. The Devil told the man that as long as ble, but no simpler’. Toavoid us being misled by over-simplifi- he was willing to quit drinking he could immediately go to cation, then, I will show why we have good reason to make our Heaven, where he would forever have a better time. The man explanation more complex, by viewing addiction as a condition replied that although Hell wasn’t so bad, and the parties were arising from a compulsion which undermines the ability to great, he preferred Heaven, and was willing to go there right self-regulate. Tobegin this explanation, let’s look more deeply now. The Devil told him that if he wanted he could have a into the Socratic understanding of self-mastery or self-control. great send-off party now, and go to Heaven tomorrow. The

Socrates on Self-Mastery Although Socrates holds that when we know the good we will choose to do it, he attributes to temptation a power to dis- tort what we think is good. He then informs us of a way to defeat this Siren’s call: knowledge can provide a means of cir- cumventing temptation’s distorting influence. This special knowledge is a kind of know-how in discerning what is good, like an artistic skill, or practical expertise. Socrates describes this skill/knowledge somewhat vaguely, as being “some kind of measuring ability” (Protagoras, 357b). Such knowledge allows its possessor to avoid being deceived about what is really best, and so to succeed in pursuing the true good. In this way, Socrates maintains, knowing how to discern the good leads to doing the good, despite temptation’s deceptions. It means having the right kind of ability to both choose and do what is best, and this is what having self-mastery means. In Xenophon’s Symposion (2.10), a romantic strategy is reported by Xenophon which emphasizes Socrates’ point about developing skills to improve self-mastery. Here Socrates tells us that for his wife he has UK chosen Xanthippe, a woman with ‘spirit’, so that he can develop . CO the ‘ease’ he wants to have in conversing with everyone! . By linking the experience of willingly choosing what appears best with a description of how that choice can be the CHRISMADDEN outcome of a process deceiving us about what is best, the . Socratic analysis of temptation goes beyond a simple ‘willing-

ness’ model of choice. In my interpretation, on the Socratic ADDEN WWW model, one fails to choose to do the good one previously pre- M ferred because one doesn’t have the ability (the know-how) to HRIS see it as the better alternative (perhaps only momentarily). To © C do what is best one must therefore develop this ability/know- ARTOON how. This model thus allows that someone might not have the C

16 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 man thought it seemed a good idea to have the best of both important preferences, even knowingly. Moreover, those who worlds, so he accepted the deal. The next day the man was follow addiction’s callings do not simply act from their own reminiscing about how great the send-off party was when the sanctioned desires; they have become the enchanted followers Devil approached him and said he could have another terrific of yearnings arising from a metastasized love. The ability to party right then, and go to Heaven the next day. Of course the recover often has to develop as a result of experiencing addic- man accepted. Each day the Devil made the same offer, and tion’s deep hardships. Addicts often talk about how it took a lot each day the man accepted the party, replying, “I’ll quit drink- of destructiveness, danger and ‘craziness’ before they could ing tomorrow.” Well, the Devil knew that the man didn’t have realize how ‘insane’ they had become. Toparaphrase one self- what it takes to ever refuse a great party. diagnosed alcoholic’s breakthrough allowing him to finally In order for our well-being not to be undermined, we need to understand his problem: “I knew I was an alcoholic after my be able to be motivated by certain preferences. The protagonist bike hit something and I went flying off, but had made sure of our story would prefer to get out of Hell, but he also needs that my hands and arms protected my bottle rather than my the ability to be motivated by that preference – and he doesn’t head.” It is not just a simple question of misinformed choice. have what it takes to do that. His desire to drink trumps his preference to do what he would prefer to be able to do, thereby Addicts and Non-Addicts Alike undermining the kind of self-regulation he would prefer to have. Is compassion warranted for our self-regulatory failures? The willingness model fails to capture the presence, nature, and Suppose you fail in a conscious attempt to do something significance of these kinds of self-regulatory failures, but this good. If so, you didn’t have what you needed to succeed – the kind of dynamic is what addiction is built upon. For instance, right urges, intentions, effort, plan, circumstances, or whatever many smokers would prefer not to smoke. They believe that else. Someone might argue that you could have done better, by smoking is bad for them, and often express their preference not for example forming the right intention: but they are being to smoke, perhaps just before lighting up. These addicts know misleading if they are thereby suggesting that you did have, that they are failing to enact their preference, and they do not under those very circumstances, what sufficed for you to have intellectually sanction their akratic acts, even though they have done better, since it’s impossible that your circumstances were intentionally engaged in them. This is called ‘clear-eyed akrasia’. adequate to the task while also being inadequate. In other We might exhibit akrasia by, for example, over-indulging on words, to say that you could have done better overlooks the occasion, but that doesn’t mean we’re addicts. Addiction way the world was: the world didn’t have what sufficed to have involves other features, such as serious consequences which the provided you the means to do better, otherwise it would have. person, e.g. a smoker, prefers to avoid, but is unable to self-reg- There is a way one might have had what was needed inde- ulate well enough to avoid. As shown, this self-regulatory fail- pendent of how things were, viz, through luck. If the universe ure can work by disguising its presence behind a mask of had just been slightly different in the right way, or if the right choices made willingly or despite intentionally resolving against kind of difference (e.g. the right choice) spontaneously arose, an addiction. Let’s further expose the nature of the problem. then without you bringing about either, you could have had either in place, through luck. So we can see how luck comes Addiction as a Disorder into play by providing or depriving us of the chance to have Hal was a nurse who stole painkillers from patients to grat- different thoughts and actions occur. It might also be thought ify his addiction. Hiding in hospital bathroom stalls, he would possible apart from luck to have had things turn out differ- fill two syringes, one with painkillers mixed with toilet water, ently: if one chooses one’s choices, for example. Tobe a choice and the other with an antidote to stop him overdosing on the means there must have been alternatives. But clearly one still painkillers. The syringe with the painkiller was taped on and didn’t have what sufficed to have made the different choice; into one arm in such a manner that by flexing his arm the and so, just as before, luck comes into play. (Notice also that plunger would close to inject more of its contents. Hal created the series of choices either had no beginning, hence no choice the same kind of arrangement with the antidote syringe taped was made which accounts for the series being in place, or if it on and inserted into the other arm. Having twisted his body did begin, the primary lack of choice still holds, since no around to position that forearm near the bathroom floor, if he chooser can create itself, which would be a necessary condition collapsed due to an overdose, he would fall on that arm, of choosing to bring the choice-making about.) thereby pushing the plunger in to inject the antidote. When thinking how misfortune has deprived someone of Hal hated stealing his patients’ medication, using toilet what is needed for doing better, we sometimes respond compas- water in a fix, and living in a panic about being caught. He sionately by communicating that the person would have done didn’t want to continue with the nightmarish lifestyle he was better at controlling their over-eating/smoking/alcoholism/other engaged in. Yet although he had been treated at multiple temptations if they could have. When we realize that luck is rehabs, Hal couldn’t stop. Eventually he again sought help to required to put into place what was needed in order to have get drug-free and begin a new life. what would have enabled us to have done better, more compas- Addiction is not just a condition made up of a bunch of sion might arise towards ourselves and others, as we see how the weak-willed acts. Addiction undermines the person’s self-regu- trouble we bring about is also what fortune sets up for us. lation, true. But it also undermines their ability to accurately © DR ALAN BRODY 2012 assess their problem’s seriousness as it repetitively generates a Alan Brody has a PhD in Philosophy, and is a licensed willingness or motivation for acting in violation of their most psychotherapist and addiction specialist living in Santa Fe.

May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 17 Plato’s Neurobiology Elizabeth Laidlaw explores some parallels between a modern picture of the brain and Plato’s description of the psyche.

evelopments in neurobiology reveal and functionally. Psychologists tell us that this feature of a picture of the brain with many brain growth helps explain young people’s lack of abil- Dparallels to Plato’s descrip- ity to adequately regulate emotion and weigh tion of the psyche. Given that Plato’s alternatives, leading to impulsiveness (see for moral theory is built on his neocortex instance Harry Chugani, ‘A Critical Period of or rational brain description of the psyche, let’s Brain Development’, Preventive Medicine 27, explore what insight this 1998). analogy might provide for limbic or emotional The three parts of the brain are in com- developing a moral theory brain munication with each other – some-

based on our knowledge brain stem or times. Howard Bath says that the of the brain. How might reptilian/ highway from the survival and emo- this help philosophers to survival brain tional brains to the rational brain reach agreement about spe- develops much earlier than the path cific moral issues? For exam- from the rational part to the emo- ple, how ought we to assess tional and survival parts. For our first the morality of a fourteen- two decades of life, therefore, the sur- year-old choosing to have vival and emotional brains are calling most a baby or a fifteen-year- of the shots, most of the time. Tomature, old teen shooting a police the emotional and rational parts of the officer in the back? brain require development of their neural highways. This development The Triune Brain comes from interacting with other Like Howard Gardner’s brains – other people. So, even at ‘multiple intelligence’ theory, this very basic level, we need each neuroscientist Paul MacLean’s other. More specifically, the interac- ideas of the ‘triune brain’ grew tion is most needed when we are out of observing extreme cases young, while our brains are develop- of neural disorders – seizures ing. Thus Bath advises: “A large part of the and extreme emotions. task of parents, teachers, counselors, and mentors is to MacLean’s picture of a tripartite help youth finish wiring their brains. The most powerful effect brain structure facilitated develop- on positive brain development comes from connections with ment in the science of mental diseases positive, caring adults and peers” (Howard Bath, ‘Our Amazing like anorexia nervosa. (See The Triune Brain in Evolution, Paul Brains’, Reclaiming Children and Youth 14.3, 2005). MacLean, Plenum Press, 1990.) Continuous and positive interaction during the first year and The triune brain consists of three brain structures nestled a half of life is critical to moral development, since early experi- within each other (see figure). The innermost part, the first to ences program us to react to our environment in predictable have evolved, is the survival brain, alternatively referred to as ways. If our early relationships are negative, we develop neural the reptilian brain or the brain stem. This controls essential func- pathways that lead us toward unsociable, sometimes violent tions of breathing and reproduction, as well as other reflexive, actions – a.k.a. ‘adaptively generated primitive actions’. If we instinctual functions. The middle, limbic brain, or the emotional have no early relationships, our brains literally won’t grow the brain, evolved after the reptilian brain, but before the neocor- neurons necessary for us to relate to the social world. tex. It sorts incoming information as pleasurable or painful (or Louis Cozolino observes about adults who were abused as alternatively, as promising or threatening). Emotion originates children: “the brains of these children have been shaped to sur- in this part of the brain, and its purpose is to compel us to act. vive, but are ill-equipped to negotiate the peace” (‘It’s a Jungle As we grow, the third part, the rational brain, or the neocortex, in There’, Louis Cozolino, Psychotherapy Networker, Sept/Oct takes on the job of managing the emotion-laden brain activity. 2008). He argues that one needs the expertise of a psychothera- This part of the brain plans, weighs alternatives, makes deci- pist to help the survivor’s capacity for self-awareness emerge in sions, and regulates emotional impulses. It is the only part of the rational brain, and to further develop the pathways of com- the brain that produces an awareness of the other two parts, munication with, and begin to mediate the impulses from, the and of itself. According to neuroscience, babies are born with other two parts of the brain. Success may be thwarted by the fairly well-developed reptilian (survival) and emotional brains, body’s own biology here, since the unconscious impulses from but the rational brain takes years to fully develop, physically the survival and emotional aspects of the brain arrive at a rate

18 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 six times greater than the rational brain can process. wealth or honor matter more than anything else. Education Cozolino continues, “We can help our clients become more tries to overturn false beliefs. Unfortunately, thinks Plato, most consciously clear-sighted about themselves by helping them adults are not sufficiently advanced intellectually to go on to become aware of the unconscious, irrational impulses arising acquire true or ultimate knowledge, which is knowledge of the from the older regions of the brain.” Reading Cozolino’s words Forms. On Plato’s view, only with knowledge of the Forms can here brought to my mind Socrates’ idea of purging falsehood the educators of the Republic properly encourage recollection from a person’s thinking to prepare them to apprehend the and the purging of false beliefs in the people. Furthermore, to Forms. I began to ponder how closely the triune map of the survive, the Republic must also produce a philosopher king, brain and Cozolino’s prescription matched up with the concept whose knowledge of the Forms means he can rule with of the soul and the moral theory emerging from Plato’s Republic. wisdom through a knowledge of the higher (or deeper) truth. Now the survival brain is very potent: it controls most Plato’s Conception of the Soul and the Triune Brain bodily actions, and can allow independent survival from birth; In the Republic the but the emotional and rational brain thrive “only if they are psyche (mind or soul) successful in early relationships” (ibid). If those early relation- of a person is ships inhibit or misdirect brain growth, it takes the skill of a described in terms of seasoned psychotherapist to safely readjust the rational brain’s function. Socrates ability to moderate the illogical, deeply-seated survival strate- describes the psyche as gies originating from the primitive and emotional brains. The having three parts: curse of teens resolving their differences with bullets and reason, spirit and blades is often rooted in these deeply-imbedded illogical sur- appetite, for which he vival patterns. Hence if enlightened by recent findings of neu- employs the metaphor of reason being a charioteer guiding the roscience, Plato would perhaps instead admonish us to develop chariot of the psyche as it is being pulled by two horses, spirit quality relationships with children during infancy and early and appetite (or will and desire). The function of the rational childhood, in order to promote their development of the fac- part is to be wise, that is to rule with insight on behalf of the ulty of reason. The ability to reason well is necessary to judg- entire soul. The courageous or high-spirited protective part is ing well, and so is necessary for the appointment of good subject to, but an ally of, the rational part. The appetitive part guardians and philosopher-kings. And in addition to requiring is ruled over by the other two. Compare this concept with the nurturing during early childhood in this way, and afterwards concept of the triune brain. The ‘reason’ part of the Platonic the grooming of one’s soul until it is well-ordered, Plato’s third psyche can be said to be equivalent to the rational brain, the mandate would be to establish a well-funded mental health neocortex; the ‘spirited’ part of the psyche with the emotional care system – for the care of the soul, as he might say. brain, or limbic system; and the basic, ‘appetitive’ part of the Perhaps the most obvious philosophical objection to these mind, with the survival or reptilian part of the brain. You brain-based conclusions is that, in using neuroscience to guide might agree that the analogy makes a close fit. ethics, this Neuro-Moral Theory commits the naturalistic Louis Cozolino argues for the importance of the triune fallacy. Can our survival instincts and our need to thrive tell us brain model for the successful psychotherapist. Similarly to what we morally ought to do? The debate over whether or not how Plato analyses the soul, Cozolino describes the three it is a fallacy to derive conclusions about how the world ought to brains as having ‘distinctive manners’ and ‘unique agendas’, be solely from factual claims about how the world is began with sometimes in conflict with one another. Executive decisions David Hume three centuries ago. Hume warned of the logical are made at each level, and these decisions often oppose one difficulty of this move, pointing out that nothing can appear in another. For example, the rational part of the brain may reason the conclusion of an argument which does not appear in its to stop smoking, while the emotional part of the brain desires premises. So is it logically possible to deduce how we ought to to continue puffing away. raise and judge children from the experimental results of neu- The moral theory emerging from the Republic is that a roscience? Yes, it is. The Neuro-Moral Theory takes seriously person ought to aspire to know the Forms of things like Jus- the constraints of human biology and, rather than committing tice, Beauty, Good(ness), etc so that she can use this knowledge the fallacy of deriving what we ought to do from what is the to order herself justly. Yet the Republic’s Cave metaphor sug- case, is supported by the philosophical wisdom that ‘ought gests that only in certain circumstances can we get through a implies can’. That is, what we are morally obligated to do must sort of epistemic cloudiness to see the Forms (Republic 63) [see be within our grasp. What I’m suggesting is that we use the box in second article – Ed]. The lesson from the Cave allegory lessons of neuroscience to guide our decisions about the educa- is that a person must be educated to be unshackled from her tion of children, and about our moral assessment of them. Like false beliefs, so that she may be receptive to the abstractions of Plato I am suggesting that being moral requires good thinking, the Forms. Having apprehended the form of the Good, she which (unlike Plato) I say requires good brain development. reasons her way back into the cave, this time armed with the © DR ELIZABETH LAIDLAW 2012 knowledge of the Forms, or as we might say, a knowledge of Elizabeth Laidlaw is the author of Plato’s Epistemology: How ultimate truth. Much is at stake here: Plato thinks that the Hard Is It ToKnow? (Peter Lang Publishing, 1996). She is destruction of his hypothetical Republic will be a consequence Associate Professor of Philosophy at Monroe Community College in of people acting on unjustified false beliefs, for example that Rochester, New York.

May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 19 Galahad vs Odysseus Emrys Westacott on honour codes and strategic thinking in sport and beyond. n the last seconds of extra time in the 2010 soccer World Naturally, a Great Debate immediately ensued among Cup quarter final between Ghana and Uruguay, with the soccer aficionados and other moralists around the world. Many Iscore at 1-1, Ghana were awarded a free kick deep in the were outraged that Ghana had been defeated by what they saw Uruguayan half. The ball was crossed into the penalty area and a as a blatant piece of cheating. Others denied that Suarez had goalmouth scramble ensued. Twice the ball headed toward the cheated, pointing out that the hand-ball had been instinctive net, and twice it was cleared off the line by Uruguayan striker rather than premeditated. Luis Suarez: the first time with his knee, the second time with This incident raises all sorts of questions. Did Suarez cheat? his hands. Following the rule book exactly, the referee awarded If what he did wasn’t cheating, was it, nevertheless, unsporting? Ghana a penalty and showed Suarez the red card. If so, should we describe his action as unethical? It also offers Suarez left the field in tears. Most penalties are converted an opportunity for a meta-reflection on how we decide – and into goals, so at that moment it seemed overwhelmingly likely how we should decide – what view to take when confronted that Ghana would score and become the first African nation with controversies of this sort. ever to reach the semi-finals of the World Cup. An entire con- tinent readied itself for ecstatic celebrations. Sadly for the Enter The Champions Africans, Asomoah Gyan’s penalty hit the crossbar. The game Let’s begin by giving names to two opposing views of went to a penalty shoot-out, which Uruguay won. Suarez’s hand-ball. The Odyssian perspective, named for Afterwards, Suarez boasted that he had “made the best save Homer’s famously crafty hero, says that Suarez should be of the tournament,” and was entirely unrepentant. “I did it,” praised for his cleverness. What he did might have been foolish he said, “so that my team-mates could win the shoot-out. in some circumstances, but in the last seconds of extra time in a When I saw Gyan miss the penalty, it felt great.” knockout round he has nothing to lose. If he lets the ball past him, Uruguay are out of the competition. Sir Galahad The Odyssian perspective admires success. It focuses on ends and doesn’t worry much about means. By contrast, what we can call the Galahadian attitude is not prepared to compro- mise ethical principles for the sake of achieving some end, no matter how great. Todisciples of Galahad, the purest of King Arthur’s knights, virtue is non-negotiable. A code of conduct lays down what is right, and abiding by this code is always and everywhere a Galahadian’s first concern. From this point of view, Suarez acted dishonorably by violating the code. Far from being a hero, he is a sinner, a moral cynic whose reprehensible methods sully the prize he secured for his team. Which of these perspectives is preferable? In order to answer this question we have first to settle the more basic question: how should we go about deciding which point of view to prefer?

Uncovering Cheating in Sport One obvious approach is to ask: Did Suarez cheat? Underly- ing this question is the widely-held assumption that cheating is wrong. So if we can prove that he cheated, we will have proved that what he did should be condemned. But although the ques- tion is one that occurs naturally, it will only help resolve the issue if we have a generally-agreed-upon definition of cheating. We don’t, and there are two main reasons for this. First, the concept of cheating is surprisingly hard to define with precision. For instance, must cheating involve breaking the rules? Some kinds of cheating do, but not all. Tennis play- ers who, in unofficiated matches, call an opponent’s ball out when they suspect it may be good don’t break the rules, they merely violate what is known as ‘the code’. Yet they are univer- sally regarded as cheats. Must cheating involve some sort of deception? It often does. Marathon runners hitching rides clearly seek to deceive. But not all cheating is like that. If Suarez had caught the ball, handed it to the referee, and left the field, his action would have been essentially the same, yet he could

20 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 hardly be accused in that case of trying to deceive anyone. prefer? We have seen that appealing to the definition of cheat- The second problem with appealing to a definition of ing or to a principle of consistency doesn’t help. These are cheating is that the concept is ‘normatively loaded’. Like dead ends that don’t take us beyond the impasse of the original ‘murder’ or ‘perversion’, ‘cheating’ is a pejorative term. That is opposition between the two perspectives. So how might we get why although Suarez, his coach, and his teammates readily beyond this impasse? In my view, the most fruitful approach is admitted that he handled the ball, none of them would con- to ask which we would prefer: a world in which soccer is played cede that he cheated, preferring to reserve that term for other in an Odyssian spirit, or one in which Galahadian attitudes pre- sorts of offence, such as those that are pre-meditated. Asking vail. If we prefer the former, then we have no reason to criti- whether or not Suarez cheated thus gets us nowhere. cize Suarez; we might even applaud him. If we prefer the A second common approach in deciding what view to take latter, then it makes sense to disapprove of his action. of what Suarez did involves appealing to a principle of consis- Notice, this is a thoroughly pragmatist way of addressing the tency. Here we are invited to compare our view of the Suarez issue. It doesn’t assume there is any objective way of judging the episode with the way we regard other incidents we consider morality of Suarez’s hand-ball. Instead, it holds that moral posi- analogous. For instance, Odyssians might point out that in tions should be adopted or rejected according to how well they basketball it is standard practice for players to deliberately foul further our purposes and help us realize our ideals. It also assumes opponents, especially near the end of a game, in order to stop that our expressions of approval or disapproval may help nudge the clock and regain possession once the free throws have been the ethos of a sport – and perhaps also of other sports, and ulti- made. Hardly anyone sees this as morally dubious – it is simply mately, the culture at large – toward our preferred ideal. viewed as an intelligent tactic, and commentators will even call There has been little systematic research on this, but it these fouls ‘good fouls’. seems reasonable to suppose that if they adopt this approach, Galahadians, on the other hand, can point out that that in most people involved with soccer or any other sport will be led some other sports, an action comparable to Suarez’s hand-ball to disapprove of Suarez’s hand-ball, since there are good reasons would be universally viewed as outrageously unsporting. For to prefer a sports culture in which Galahadian norms prevail. instance, they might liken what Suarez did to a golfer kicking away an opponent’s putt just before it reaches the hole – an Odysseus: “On action so shockingly improper it could cost you your country the head, son!” club membership. (Never mind But appealing to consistency, like appealing to the defini- the hands) tion of cheating, turns out to be a dead end. It cannot, by itself, resolve the dispute between Odysseus and Galahad. There are two reasons for this. First, both sides can equally well make this appeal. Odysseus will point to the general acceptance in basketball of deliberate fouls provided they are properly penalized and argue that a similar attitude should become the norm in soccer. But Gala- had will mirror this maneuver and argue that since deliberate fouls are considered unsporting in soccer, we should extend this view to other sports, like basketball. Since both sides are appealing to the principle of consistency here, that principle can hardly be used to settle the dispute. Second, there are different ways of being consistent. One form of consistency, for instance, would be to recognize that dif- ferent sports have different conventions and to go along with these, whatever they are. From this perspective, one won’t expect ice hockey players to treat their opponents the way golfers do: rather, one consistently assesses conduct as sporting or unsporting in relation to the prevailing ethos within the sport being played. But suppose, instead, that one judged all conduct by all players in all sports by reference to the same ideal of sportsmanship – say, the ideal usually found in golf. That would be an alternative sort of consistency. Yet how do we decide which kind of consistency should be preferred? Obviously, we can’t appeal to the principle of consistency to settle the issue.

Choosing Sides Let’s return to our original question. In the debate over Suarez’s hand-ball, two competing outlooks emerged: the Odyssian and the Galahadian. How should we decide which to

May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 21 For match officials and administrators, the question is a no- On the other side of the ledger, were a Galahadian ethos to brainer. Matches would be easier to officiate, and referees prevail in soccer there would be no more diving for free kicks, would spend less time wiping egg off their faces after video feigning injury to waste time or get opponents sent off, under- replays proved that they had once again been duped by some hand shirt pulling, cynical tripping to blot out promising cunning piece of gamesmanship. Most players, one supposes, counter-attacks, discrete elbows in the face, or not-so-discrete would also favor this environment. Competitors in sports tackles designed to injure or intimidate. Whatever small loss where thoroughly sporting attitudes are the norm certainly might be incurred in the realm of competitive intensity would be don’t seem to enjoy themselves less. On the contrary, where more than compensated for in most people’s eyes by a freer-flow- cheating and gamesmanship abound, there tends to be more ing game. Soccer is, after all, supposed to be ‘the beautiful game’. anger, bitterness, and even occasional violence. Also significant Moreover, Galahadian sport would offer its own form of are studies showing that most athletes support drug testing as a pleasing dramatics – the sort of heroically sporting behavior that deterrent against the use of performance-enhancing drugs in would follow were players’ actions governed by the considera- sport. While doping isn’t quite the same as pretending to have tion: What would Galahad do? An incident that made the local been fouled, using drugs to gain an advantage obviously reflects newspapers in 2008 offers a memorable illustration of such an Odyssian attitude. (The hero of the Odyssey generally relies sportsmanship beyond expectations. In a softball game between on Athena rather than amphetamines to enhance his perfor- the University of Western Oregon and Central Washington mance, but the principle is similar.) Yet even those who have University, Sara Tucholski hit a home run for UWO but failed adopted the Odyssian attitude usually wish things were other- to touch first base as she ran around the diamond. Realizing her wise. They would prefer to operate in a drug-free environment, mistake, she turned back to first base, but in doing so she twisted and if they take drugs themselves, they do so because they her knee badly and collapsed in pain. Stuck at first base and believe they must in order to compete in a wicked world. unable to progress around the bases unassisted (under the rules, No doubt there are some players and coaches who thrive in no teammate could assist her), it seemed the only option was for a Machiavellian atmosphere, who pride themselves on their her to be replaced by a pinch runner, thereby reducing a well-hit ruthless, unsentimental natures, and relish the need for the home run to a mere single. But then two players from the field- keener wits that an Odyssian contest requires. According to ing team went over to first base, helped her up, and carried her them, “Winning isn’t everything – it’s the only thing.” Accord- around the bases, making sure she touched each one in turn. As ing to them, nice guys – and Galahad is unquestionably one of the trio group reached home plate, many of the players, as well these – finish last. (It’s not true that Galahad finished last: one as spectators from both teams, were moved to tears by such an could even say he won the cup! But mythic figures don’t make outstanding display of sportsmanship. good counterexamples.) But we should not assume that feisty Lest it be thought that this sort of thing would only occur Machiavellians represent the norm in sport. The majority of among amateurs – or only among females! – consider the participants would surely prefer to compete in a setting where example of tennis player Andy Roddick. In the 2005 Rome a strong honor code is in place and they don’t have to worry Masters, Roddick was at match point against Fernando Ver- about anyone’s dirty tricks. dasco. Verdasco’s second serve was called out. The double fault What about the largest group of those involved – the specta- would have given Roddick the match, but Roddick told the tors? If a Galahadian attitude prevailed, would soccer be more enjoyable to watch, or less? Some might argue that soccer played in a spirit of unblemished sportsmanship would be anemic. After all, the players that reach the highest levels are fiercely competitive individuals; if they weren’t, they wouldn’t have made it to the top. In a physically-demanding, fast-moving, full-of-passion contact sport, this competitiveness is not easily held in check. Inevitably, at times it spills over into rule-bend- ing, rule-breaking, gamesmanship, and physical aggression. Moreover, part of the appeal of soccer is the drama of the game. Competitive intensity and passion fuel this drama; and sometimes decidedly unGalahadian episodes can enhance the spectacle. Games have a narrative, and sometimes the story is that old favorite, the battle between good and evil, with certain players, or even whole teams, playing the despised but neces- sary role of villain. The disputed penalty, the flourishing of a red card, the controversies surrounding subtle bits of games- manship, the pleasurable experience of hurling abuse at wicked opponents and gullible officials, all add to the theatricality. Drain away these elements and soccer might certainly be more sporting, but wouldn’t it also lose some of its color and excite- ment? So might say the Odyssians, and they could probably count on tabloid editors for support.

22 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 hƐĞƐh ĂŶĚ ďƵƐĞƐďďƵƐĞƐ ŽĨ ŝŽůŽŐLJŝŽŽůŽŐLJ ƐƐĂLJƐƐĂLJ ŽŵŽŵƉĞƟƟŽŶŵƉĞƟƟŽŶŶ

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PATHWAYS TO PHILOSOPHY Distance learning programs leading to Awards from the International Society for Philosophers PFA and London University BA Philosophy Degree www.philosophypathways.com Philosophy For All

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PFA meets once a month at “Kantʼs Cave” (the upstairs bar of a London pub) for a talk and social evening. We also organise public lectures, debates, a monthly film club, a feminism forum, frequent philosophical walks and a regular bulletin. Choose from: Introduction to Philosophy, Philosophy of For more information phone 020 8292 1752 Mind, Ancient Philosophy, Philosophy of Language, Ethics, or email us at: [email protected] Metaphysics. Visit the Pathways web site, or write for further details to: Dr Geoffrey Klempner, Director of Studies, Visit our website: http://pfalondon.org International Society for Philosophers, 907 Chesterfield Road, or: www.meetup.com/Philosophy-For-All-London/ Sheffield S8 0SS. Or email: [email protected] umpire it was good. His honesty handed Verdasco a lifeline where it was caught by Neuer, who quickly threw it to one of which, as it turned out, enabled Verdasco to win that game his team, thereby suggesting that there was no reason for the and, eventually, the match. game to be halted. Remarkably, neither the referee nor his Sporting generosity of this sort even appears on the soccer assistant saw that the ball had crossed the line. Play was waved field, at times. In a 2001 English Premier League game on, and a few minutes later the whistle blew for half time. Ger- between West Ham and Everton, the Everton goalkeeper went many went on to win the game 4-1. down injured during a West Ham attack. The ball was crossed Neuer said about the incident, “I tried not to react to the ref- to the Hammers’ striker Paolo di Canio; but instead of trying eree and just concentrate on what was happening. I think the way to score into an unguarded net, di Canio caught the ball and I carried on so quickly fooled the referee into thinking it was not indicated that the keeper needed urgent attention. Supporters over.” Cleary, Neuer is of the Odyssian persuasion. He knew a of both teams gave him a standing ovation. goal had been scored, quick-wittedly saw a chance to deceive the Such examples of outstanding sporting behavior – and many referee, and took it. Afterwards he was unapologetic. From an more could be cited – show that the Galahadian attitude is Odyssian point of view, of course, what Neuer did was entirely possible even in the heat of gladiatorial combat. They also rational. In sport as in life, a lot depends on luck. The officials’ underscore the fact that most people enjoy witnessing sports- failure to spot the goal was a huge slice of luck for Germany. But manship of this order and approve of it strongly. over the long haul, good and bad luck balances out, so the Odyssian attitude is to accept whatever good fortune comes your Worlds of Sport way – to make gift horses, rather than look them in the mouth. A Galahadian ethos would not only help to eliminate cyni- But what would Galahad have done had he been in Neuer’s cal cheating, it would also make exemplary sportsmanship the shoes? Again, the answer is obvious. He would have signaled norm. Toimagine how things would be in this alternative uni- to the referee that the ball had crossed the line, disdaining to verse, consider two other controversies connected with the take advantage of a refereeing blunder and sparing the officials 2010 World Cup. their subsequent embarrassment. France qualified for the competition by beating Ireland. This did not happen, of course, and no one expected it. And The winning goal was set up by the French captain Thierry given that Galahadian attitudes are not the current default in Henry after he had clearly handled the ball. The Irish were soccer, it was perhaps too much to expect in the heat of the naturally outraged. French supporters, after their initial jubila- moment. But a few minutes later the whole German team, tion, became decidedly shamefaced. Many, including the assembled in the dressing room at half time, would have seen the French sports minister, the newspaper Libération, and the trade replays and become fully aware that, by rights, the score should union representing gym teachers (only in France!) urged a have been 2-2. Here they were no longer operating in the heat of rematch. When Le Monde polled its readers on whether France the moment. And here was a marvelous opportunity to give deserved to be in the World Cup, 88% said no. soccer, and sport in general, a massive injection of Galahadian Henry’s reaction was inconsistent. Immediately after the spirit. Had Galahad been giving the half-time team talk, he goal he jubilated with his team-mates; at the end of the game would have instructed his captain to pass the ball to the English he consoled his defeated opponents. Interviewed afterwards he team at the kick-off and allow them to score unopposed, thereby admitted handling the ball, but made no apology, saying, “I am leveling the scores. The world would have been stunned; but not the referee.” Two days later, aware of mounting criticism, once it had grasped what had happened, the world would almost he said he regretted celebrating the goal as he had done, and certainly have given the Germans a deafening standing ovation. (unlike the French Football Federation) supported the idea of So, to return to our original question: How should we replaying the game. decide what view to take of Suarez’s hand-ball? If we are con- What would Galahad have done? That’s easy to say. One can vinced that soccer would be more enjoyable for almost every- readily accept Henry’s claim that the hand-ball was an instinc- one concerned should a Galahadian ethos become the norm, tive reaction as the ball came quickly to him at an awkward that gives us a reason to praise displays of outstanding sports- height. But once it has occurred, the sporting thing – the Gala- manship and to criticize anyone who employs less than honor- hadian thing – to do is obviously not to celebrate, but to tell the able methods to gain an advantage. referee that the ball was handled and that the goal should not The purpose and rationale for our verdict is the same in both stand. If the referee is so pig-headed as to refuse to change his cases: to help nudge soccer toward the Galahadian ideal. It does- decision, then the French team could gift their opponents a n’t follow automatically that we should take a similar line in every goal, as the Dutch team Ajax once did in a game against Cam- other sport. The pragmatic approach advocated here does not buur after they accidentally scored whilst voluntarily returning fetishize abstract consistency. Conceivably, some sports might be possession to their opponents following a stoppage. more enjoyable without a strict honor code in place. The only The second-most-controversial incident of the 2010 World example that comes to mind, though, is all-in wrestling; and that Cup in South Africa (the Suarez hand-ball being the first) is more properly classified as theater rather than sport. It seems occurred in the second round match between England and reasonable, therefore, tentatively to generalize the Galahadian Germany. The English midfielder Frank Lampard fired in a prescription across all sports. Eventually the ideal may be realized shot that beat the German keeper, Manuel Neuer, struck the where every competitor has an internal voice of conscience that crossbar, bounced down into the goal, hit the ground about two nips the very idea of dishonorable actions in the bud by asking feet past the goal line, and then bounced back out of the goal, always, everywhere: What would Galahad do?

24 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 Wider Fields The parallel between the Suarez controversy and the debate Whether the Galahadian attitude should be extended to over strategic defaulting is almost exact. One side views break- moral issues beyond sport is an interesting question. Cer- ing the contract as unethical; the other side views it as a legiti- tainly, there are controversies that are strikingly parallel in mate option. Here, too, there is a temptation to settle the form to the debate over Suarez’s hand-ball, and sometimes, an matter quickly by appealing to a supposedly self-evident prin- analysis of one debate can usefully illuminate an issue in a ciple such as ‘Thou shalt honor thy contracts’, or by claiming quite different sphere. Totake just one example: is it unethical that a contract is, by definition, a kind of promise, and for homeowners to default on their mortgages simply because promise-breaking is wrong; or, from the other side, by show- it is in their financial interest to do so? ing how justifying strategic defaulting is consistent with one’s With the sharp decline in house prices in many countries position on other supposedly similar questions. But, as with which began in 2006, this question has arisen for millions of the Suarez controversy, these argumentative strategies don’t so people who have found themselves ‘underwater’. If you are much settle the dispute as short circuit it. They assume there is making payments on a $200,000 mortgage to buy a house that a Right Way, the rightness of which can be demonstrated. is now worth $100,000, you may be better off walking away By contrast, the pragmatic approach makes no such assump- from the loan. Continuing with your monthly payments is like tion. Instead it asks which way of thinking we would like to see buying stock for $20 a share when its current market value is prevail. If we would prefer a world in which people consider $10 a share. It’s a bad investment. From a strictly financial honoring contracts a moral obligation, and we see this as a real- point of view, a ‘strategic default’ may be the best option. istic possibility, then that would be a reason to side with the As with the Suarez controversy, there are two main schools moralists. If, on the other hand, we think things would be better of thought. On the one hand, there are the moralists – disciples were everyone on the same page as the unperturbed strategic of Galahad – who see strategic defaulting as unethical. Signing defaulters, that would be a reason for endorsing their position. a mortgage contract, they argue, is like making a promise. And And doing so doesn’t make us cynical amoralists. It may simply just as it is dishonorable to break a promise for self-serving rea- be that we think that promoting the strategic attitude will do sons, so it is wrong to renege on a contract unless breaking it is more good than harm since fewer people will bankrupt them- unavoidable. This is the view taken by a majority of Americans selves, sacrificing their happiness, their children’s education, and in 2010 according to a Pew Research Center study. other worthwhile things on the altar of abstract moral principle. On the other hand, there are the legalists who point out that Moreover, it might help level the playing field between the little the contract signed by the bank and the homeowner stipulates folk, who view defaulting as shameful, and Big Finance, who what will happen if the borrower stops making payments. Typ- don’t wear this particular moral straightjacket. ically, in that case, the bank is entitled to foreclose on the prop- If, as a third possibility, we believe that the moralist’s atti- erty. Tothe business mentality, the question of whether one tude is destined for the dustbin of history but worry that wide- should strategically default on a loan is entirely a financial spread strategic defaulting would have bad economic conse- matter. Morality doesn’t come into it. One looks at the terms quences or undermine moral fiber, then we should urge that of the contract and calculates the bottom line. Obviously, this contracts or the law be written to make strategic defaulting so way of thinking parallels the Odyssian view of Suarez’s hand- costly as to be irrational. ball: there are times when it is makes sense to break the rules and pay the prescribed penalty. If the other party feels The Final Score aggrieved, the appropriate course of action isn’t for them to The earlier analysis of the Suarez controversy can be mapped scream “Cheat!” or “Swindler!” but to lobby for a change in onto many other moral debates in a similar way. But it is impor- the rules. In soccer, the referees could be allowed to award tant to recognize that the pragmatic approach allows one to take penalty goals, just as in rugby they can award penalty tries. In different sides in different debates. One could advocate Galahadi- banking, the penalties for defaulting on loans could be made so anism on the sports field without committing oneself to a moralis- severe that it would never be an attractive option. tic view on mortgage defaults. And those who share the pragmatic perspective may still disagree over which ideals they prefer. One may find the Galahadian ideal attractive, both within sport and in other domains, yet recognize that others may rationally prefer an Odyssian world, relishing the opportunities it gives for playing the ‘Great Game’ – the unceasing battle to outwit everyone else in sport, in business, in politics, in life. Nevertheless, the pragmatic approach, precisely because it avoids the rigidity of moral stances that appeal to definitions or pride themselves on their unbending commitment to objective principles, is inherently flexible. And this makes it well-suited to a time when our forms of life, includ- ing our social conventions, are in constant flux. © EMRYS WESTACOTT 2012 Emrys Westacott is Professor of Philosophy at Alfred University in Western New York. His most recent book is The Virtues of Our Vices (Princeton University Press, 2011).

May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 25 The Ethics of Taxation Richard Baron finds that philosophy need not be taxing. n the Western world the propor- mean too small a pie to share out. tion of the economy controlled Utilitarians must therefore strike a Iby the state has grown enor- balance. Economists, rather than mously over the last century, and philosophers, are the ones to advise pressures on the state are set to rise them on how to do this balancing of as people live longer, meaning that interest to get the most productive tax will continue to rise for the great result. This is not surprising. Utili- majority of the population. What tarianism merely lays down a com- are the rights and wrongs of asking putational rule. Utilitarians need so many people to pay so much? experts from other disciplines to do Toanswer this we can ask several the computations for them. questions, including how much tax Unlike the utilitarian, the deon- should be collected in total, which tologist does not tell us to make objectives of taxation are legitimate, computations. Instead, he or she and how individuals should conduct lays down absolute duties. One themselves as taxpayers. We will common such duty is to respect address these questions by using other people’s property rights. This arguments from political philosophy, could be interpreted to mean that 2012 and the following three approaches there should be no tax at all, ADDEN

to ethics: because tax is the forcible transfer M

of property away from taxpayers. HRIS © C • Utilitarianism, which tells us to aim On the other hand, the duty to for the greatest total happiness respect property rights could be across the population. In the eco- used to argue that any social S TAX INSPECTOR nomic sphere, we can interpret ‘hap- resources one used should be paid ʼ

piness’ as the satisfaction of our for, even if one did not ask for those AGRITTE M desires; and so utilitarianism as resources to be provided. Thus in aiming for maximum satisfaction of desires. order not to be a thief, anyone who uses a public hospital, or even a public road, should make sure that he or she pays tax to • Deontology, which bases ethics on the idea of duty. cover their use. But it is difficult to make this argument water- tight. Is it realistic to ask people to opt out of using public • Virtue ethics, which focus on the virtues we should have, and roads if they don’t want to pay tax? They would have to move on what constitutes a virtuous life. A broad conception of the to a wilderness somewhere. But why should they be made to virtues must be used here, encompassing not only virtues such do that, when they already own their homes? Deontology as honesty, but also virtues such as using one’s talents and lead- therefore does here what it often does. It offers arguments ing a fulfilled life. which pull in opposite directions, and leaves us completely uncertain about what to conclude. The Total Amount of Tax Virtue ethics can be a bit more helpful on the question of For a utilitarian the most important economic goals are to the justice of taxation. Several virtues seem more likely to be ensure that goods and services are available to allow everyone exercised if tax rates are moderate than if they are very high. to have a decent life, and to ensure that these resources are One should use one’s talents to the full. Financial incentives distributed widely enough for all or most people to enjoy can encourage people to use their talents, but very high taxa- them. A true utilitarian would only care about total satisfac- tion dampens down those incentives by reducing take-home tion, not about the evenness of its distribution, but with taxa- pay. Another virtue is charity, either in cash or in time. The tion we’re discussing the distribution of resources. If each more take-home pay people have, the more likely it is that person has modest resources, that should generate more satis- they will feel able to afford charitable donations; and the faction in total than if the same total resources are concen- higher peoples’ pay rates, the easier it will be for them to take trated in the hands of a few people. Taxation plus government time away from paid work to perform charity work or other spending are an obvious way to achieve redistribution to forms of civic service, as school governors or magistrates for ensure that everybody gets something. example. A third virtue is independence. It is good to earn There is a certain tension here. Taxation and spending help what one needs rather than to depend on subsidies from to achieve wide resource distribution, but high rates of tax others. Lower rates of taxation make independence more reduce investment and incentives, which makes it hard to gener- easily achievable. ate sufficient total resources. Too much redistribution may thus Let us also turn to political arguments based on the fact that

26 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 taxation is coercive. In Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Robert materialistic desires to be satisfied. Virtue ethicists will approve Nozick argued that imposed taxation is a violation of our rights. because these services enhance people’s opportunities to use Property is mainly shared out among us initially by a process of their talents and to lead flourishing lives. acquisitions a long time ago, and by exchanges since then. If the When we turn to aid to the poor, utilitarians will approve initial acquisitions and the subsequent exchanges were just, then because transferring resources from rich to poor increases the the current distribution of property is just, and it would be unjust happiness of the poor more than it reduces the happiness of to interfere with that distribution by force. If people individually the rich. Virtue ethicists will approve because with redistribu- agree to pay for things like a police service, that’s fine; but the tion the poor can be helped to flourish and develop virtues, majority should not force the unwilling minority to contribute. and because looking after the less fortunate is itself a virtue One of the most interesting challenges to this line of (although voluntary charity may be a greater virtue than forced thought was given by Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel in The payment). And deontologists can recognize a duty to care for Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice (2002). They say that we the poor. The greatest of all deontologists, Immanuel Kant, should not think in terms of a natural distribution of income certainly believed in duty to the poor, although he did not have and wealth, with a tax-levying state interfering with that distrib- a tax-funded welfare state in mind as a response. However, ution. Rather, the state is what gives the stability that allows none of this means that any kind of ethicist would favour high incomes. They point out that in a world without govern- unlimited provision of any of these good things through the tax ment there would be no security of property, no system of system. As we have already seen, one has to consider the con- enforceable contracts, and so on. As a result, overall levels of sequences of the overall level of taxation. wealth would be much lower than they actually are. It is not the A more controversial objective is the promotion of equality, case that the existing wealth would be distributed differently in the sense of equality of economic outcome (ie wealth) rather without a tax-levying state: the wealth would mostly not exist. than of equality of opportunity. Taxation can very easily be used This seems to be true. But Murphy and Nagel’s argument is to make the distribution of incomes and wealth more equal, not enough to legitimise high levels of taxation and a big state. either by transferring cash from the rich to the poor, or by Suppose we had a minimal state, which provided security and a providing the same state services to everyone while legal framework for business, but no more. So there would be taxing the rich more than the poor in order to pay for no state benefits, and all schools, hospitals and roads would be them. Greater equality may also be an accidental out- private, profit-making, enterprises. The distribution of income come of using the tax system to do other things. But it and wealth in that minimal state might be very different from can also be a goal in itself. Is it legitimate to pursue what it actually is, but the total income and wealth might not equality through taxation? be so different. Thus Nozick could reply that this distribution, There is a utilitarian argument for greater eco- with a minimal state, should be assumed to be just. If so, any nomic equality. If more equal societies are happier, coercive interference by taxation to create a bigger state would more stable, have lower crime rates and so on, violate peoples’ rights. then a utilitarian would want to promote This response does not show that a big state would be equality unless that interfered too wrong, but it does put the pressure back on those who advo- much with other utilitarian cate a big state to show that a big state is justified despite the objectives. We must let the coercion involved. sociologists tell us whether The Legitimate Objectives of Taxation Tax can be used for all sorts of purposes, more and it is often clear what equal societies do ethicists of have those advantages. any par- One can also argue for ticular kind would equality on the basis of jus- say about these purposes. tice. The idea is that if there We can start with the provi- is no positive justification for sion of law and order and people receiving unequal the more extensive public shares of the available services such as health- resources, then they should care and education. receive equal shares, otherwise an Utilitarians will injustice is done to those who get approve of taxation less than they would under an for these things equal distribution. because they allow Toconsider the merits of this more goods and argument we should start with the services to be work of John Rawls, and in particu- produced, and they lar with his book A Theory of Justice also allow more non- (1971).

May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 27 Rawls argued that social inequalities should be arranged so ity, and so prefer society Y. Rawls was wrong to assume that he that the greatest benefit is gained by the people with the fewest or she must rationally prefer society X. advantages. However, he says an unequal system might actually benefit the disadvantaged more than an economically egalitarian The Conduct of Taxpayers one. For example, inequalities of income would be perfectly Most taxpayers pay their taxes, without fuss. But not all tax- acceptable if they were a necessary result of there being incen- payers act in this way. So lastly let’s look at whether two other tives which encourage skilled people to work hard and entrepre- forms of behaviour can be ethically acceptable: tax evasion, and neurial people to take risks, so long as the result was that those tax avoidance. with the least income-earning potential were still made better Tax evasion involves knowingly mis-reporting the facts: for off than they would otherwise have been. That looks sensible. example, declaring an income of £50,000 when the true figure Why not let the rich grow richer, if the poor are helped by their is £60,000; or declaring that an asset is owned by one company doing so? The poor will possibly even be grateful. in a group when it’s really owned by another, so paying less tax. Not everyone accepts that inequalities like these would be It would be very hard to give an ethical justification for tax just. For example, in his book Rescuing Justice and Equality evasion. One way to try to do so would be to argue that the (2008), Gerald Cohen argued that Rawls was far too permis- state, in imposing taxation, engaged in theft, and that in order sive of inequality. He pointed out that we are free and con- to prevent the theft one could lie to the state, just as one could scious beings. However, the talented person who says that he lie to a thief. This argument would have some plausibility in the or she will only work hard, and thereby benefit the whole context of a regime that was imposed, rather than one democ- economy, if enough money is offered, is acting like a vending ratically chosen in free elections. That is, it is possible to see a machine. A vending machine will only give you what you want regime that is not freely elected as merely a gang of bandits, if you put the money in. But we are not vending machines. We even if they are sometimes benevolent bandits. But there are can work out what we would do, given the financial incentives. many countries in which governments are freely elected, and Then we can decide to do it anyway, without the incentives. therefore their taxation demands may be considered legitimate. Cohen said that we could work out what we would do in Unlike tax evasion, tax avoidance does not involve concealing Rawls’s society, which has inequalities to give the right incen- information or lying. Instead, it involves structuring business tives to develop wealth, and then we could do the same things transactions to ensure that less tax is payable than one might without the incentives – and without the inequality. Cohen otherwise expect. The most ethically challenging examples in argued that this would give us even greater justice than Rawls’ this area are to be found in the complex schemes used by some system would achieve. Cohen could not claim that this groups involving networks of companies and partnerships in approach would be practical – the fact is that people do several countries. Tax avoidance works through compliance with respond to financial incentives – but he could claim that it the precise letter of the law, not through breaking the law. That would be just. At least, he could claim that, if we accepted the is to say, tax savings achieved may be accord with the words of basic premise that equality is generally more just than inequal- the law, but it is clear that if Parliament or other legislative ity. But should we accept that premise? bodies in other countries had thought about such schemes, it Rawls provides a key argument for equality. In his view, the would have passed different laws in order to defeat them. way to establish what means of distribution of goods and A utilitarian, concerned with aggregate welfare, might be quite resources is just, is to imagine what people would want if they relaxed about tax avoidance. After all, when tax is avoided, wealth were designing a society in which they themselves would live, is not destroyed: it is merely kept in the private sector instead of but they had no idea of what family, talents or other circum- being transferred to the public sector. The main utilitarian con- stances they would have in that society. In that situation, they cern would probably be that it would result in an unintended dis- could expect nothing better than an average share, and would tribution of the tax burden, as some of the burden would be have no reason to accept as just anything substantially worse. shifted from the rich onto people on modest incomes who cannot They would therefore choose an egalitarian society, subject to afford clever tax lawyers. That would reduce their satisfaction the allowance for inequalities we have discussed. more than it would increase the satisfaction of the better-off But it is not at all clear that people would only accept people who have reduced their tax burdens. But that loss to the inequalities which benefited the worst-off, as Rawls supposes. poor might not happen. For example, where shares in companies Suppose people had a choice between two societies, X and Y. In are held by pension funds, the pensions of ordinary people can be both societies, everyone would have at least a tolerable standard boosted when those companies avoid tax. A virtue ethicist would of living, and no-one would suffer abject poverty. In society X, be likely to view tax avoidance with disfavour. It is, after all, hardly the worst-off person would have an income of £15,000 a year, a virtuous to exploit rules knowing that one is exploiting them in few people would have incomes of £20,000, and the great major- unintended ways to redistribute the disadvantage away from one- ity would have incomes of £25,000. In society Y, the worst-off self. A deontologist would not positively favour tax avoidance, but person would have an income of £14,000, a few people would might not condemn it either. Deontologists can easily argue for a have incomes of £19,000, and the great majority would have duty to obey the law: yet obeying the law is something the tax incomes of £27,000. Someone making a choice of which society avoider takes care to do, in his own special way. they would prefer to be part of, but who did not know who they © RICHARD BARON, 2012 would be within it (Rawls’ ‘veil of ignorance’), could reasonably Richard Baron is a philosopher and a tax policy adviser. His website is take a chance on being someone with the income of the major- www.rbphilo.com

28 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 Reason as a Universal Constant Stuart Greenstreet asks if C.S. Lewis was right that reason proves the supernatural.

.S. Lewis (1898-1963) was one of C.S. Lewis Lewis explicitly denies this. “We are in the the most influential writers of his habit of talking as if the laws of Nature Cday – an ‘intellectual giant’, it was caused events to happen; but they have said. He had, and still has, a vast audience never caused any event at all… They state for his children’s fiction (The Chronicles of the pattern to which every event – if only it Narnia) and for his many books written to can be induced to happen – must conform” counter objections to religious belief he writes in Miracles on p.93. So a miracle (notably Mere Christianity). Lewis taught would not violate or suspend nature’s laws, literature at Oxford and Cambridge Uni- but would rather feed new events into versities all his adult life, and was made a nature. A miracle would occur if a super- Cambridge professor in 1954. That he was natural cause was somehow fed into nature also a deep and lucid philosopher is evident and digested – just like any other cause – by from his book Miracles (1947). Here he nature’s law-like system. built maybe the first logically sound and For Lewis naturalism would entail deter- convincing argument for the existence of something in addition minism. His view of nature is of a regime in which everything to nature, “which we may call the supernatural.” His argument that happens depends on something else happening within the is analysed below. Will it convince you? If it is convincing, system, and ultimately on the whole system of interlocking then it has serious implications for those like Richard Dawkins events. Toshow that miracles are possible, then, Lewis needs who vehemently deny anything in addition to nature. to prove that something exists which neither depends on nature’s interlocking system, nor could be explained as being a Reasoning Beyond Nature necessary product of it. This singular exceptional item, he Can all natural phenomena ultimately be explained by sci- decides, is rational thought, “which is not part of the system of ence – even the physical necessity we observe to govern the Nature”: behaviour of all natural things everywhere? Will science one day find out why gravity and the speed of light and the other “Acts of reasoning are not interlocked with the total interlocking system of fundamental physical constants are constant, and are also fine- Nature as all its other items are interlocked with one another. They are tuned for intelligent life? No one yet knows how the con- connected with it in a different way; as the understanding of a machine is stants came into being or why they are as they are, and so certainly connected with the machine, but not in the way the parts of the nature’s laws seem to lack an accessible basis. Yet if the values machine are connected with each other. The knowledge of the thing is not of those constants had been different, neither our world nor one of the thing’s parts. In this sense something beyond Nature operates when- life as we know it could have come into being. So the funda- ever we reason.” (pp.37-38; my italics) mental constants are the ‘givens’ that set the very framework of nature within which all events appear to have only natural And so he decides that the distinction between the supernat- causes, and wherein science is done. This is the arena in ural and the natural is actually between Reason and Nature, which naturalism prevails. “the frontier coming not where the ‘outer world’ ends and C.S. Lewis defined naturalism as “the doctrine that only what I would ordinarily call ‘myself’ begins, but between Nature – the whole interlocked system – exists. And if that reason and the whole mass of non-rational events, whether were true, every thing and event would, if we knew enough, be physical or psychological.” (p.38) explicable without remainder… as a necessary product of the Tojustify this conclusion, Lewis needs to prove that if all system” (p.18). Lewis wrote these words in his book Miracles events, including crucially mental events (acts of thinking), (1947). Here he grants that there can be no miracles unless were in fact causally determined, then we could never decide there exists something else in addition to nature “which we anything by logical reasoning. We could never do so, he says, may call the supernatural.” This distinction, he explains, is not because rational judgements do not depend on a causal relation between mind and matter, much less between soul and body, between causes and their effects, but on a logical relation but between nature and “something else” – something which between premises and the conclusions we infer from them. Lewis believes has to exist in addition to nature, and which he Lewis will then need a further argument to prove that logical aims to identify. reasoning is not itself a natural capacity in the same way that ToLewis, a miracle would be “an interference with Nature eyesight and hearing are definitely natural, since if reasoning by supernatural power” (p.5). Lewis’s definition is crucially was natural in the same way, it would be subject to natural different to the one David Hume used in his celebrated essay causes in the way our senses are. He believes our power of rea- Of Miracles (1777) – namely, that a miracle would be a “viola- soning did not come about in the same way as our five senses: tion of the laws of nature.” This is still the popular idea of a it was not evolved in us by a process of natural selection. But miracle: that it is a happening in which the laws of physics or why should anyone believe that the power of reason is not biology are suspended. simply a product of natural selection?

May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 29 Supernatural Reasoning could not be accepted as true, nor could any argument in its Lewis begins his argument by claiming that all possible defence be accepted as valid. Hence Lewis’s own claim that knowledge of what is true depends on the validity of reasoning: “Unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true.” But “Unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true” he he took it as self-evident (as presumably we all do) that human says in Miracles on p.21. beings are able to make valid rational inferences and do form Now a train of reasoning is valid, that is, has value as a true beliefs. means of finding truth, only if each step is connected with Lewis’s argument reduces to this: what went before in a ground-consequent relation. The easiest 1) Naturalism (defined as the doctrine that only nature exists) way of illustrating this relation, Lewis suggests, is to notice entails determinism. two distinct senses of the word because. We can say, “Grandfa- 2) If naturalism is true our beliefs are held on the basis of non- ther is ill today because he ate lobster yesterday.” We can also rational (ie deterministic) causes, and we would not be able to say, “Grandfather must be ill today because he hasn’t got up make inferences. yet (and we know he is an invariably early riser when he is 3) In that case we are not able to cite reasons to justify holding well).” In the first sentence because indicates the causal relation our beliefs. of cause and effect: the eating made him ill. In the second, it 4) But it is incontestable that we do in fact reach truths by log- indicates the logical relation of ground and consequent: the old ical inferences. man’s late rising is the reason why we believe him to be unwell. 5) Therefore we must either reject naturalism as false, or stop One indicates a connection between events or state of affairs, taking for granted that we reach true beliefs by logical infer- the other a logical relation between beliefs or assertions. ences. Unless a conclusion is the logical consequent from a ground, it 6) We cannot stop taking for granted that our beliefs are gen- will be worthless and could be true only by a fluke. Thus con- erally true. clusions depend on logic rather than on physical causes for 7) Therefore we must conclude that naturalism is false, and their validity, even if those physical causes are, for example, that something else exists in addition to nature. previous states of the brain. Although Lewis never refers to it, Immanuel Kant had Unsound Evolutions advanced precisely this argument 160 years earlier in his Lewis thought that this refuted naturalism and proved the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). There Kant truth of supernaturalism. However, as Kant knew, although wrote, “We cannot possibly conceive of a reason as being con- this argument is logically valid, it nevertheless may be sciously directed from outside in regard to its judgements. If a unsound. The second premise could be false. Even if natural- rational being were conscious of any such external influence, ism were true, and all our thoughts and beliefs were causally he would regard his judgements as determined, not by reason, determined by antecedent events, we might still be able to but by impulse. Reason must – if it to be reason at all – regard make inferences. Rational thinking was surely conducive to itself as the author of its own principles independently of survival and reproduction in our ancestors, hence a practice external influences.” (p.448) If every judgement which is the which natural selection is bound to preserve and refine. If conclusion of an argument was caused (i.e., determined) solely there is nothing but nature, one would expect reason to have by previous mental/brain events and yet was not a rational come into existence by a historical process. So Lewis saw that insight into a connection between premises and conclusion, he had to disprove the claim that “The type of mental behav- there would be no difference between valid and invalid infer- iour we now call rational thinking or inference must have been ences, and ultimately there could be no truth. In that case a ‘evolved’ by natural selection, by the gradual weeding out of doctrine of naturalism which entailed causal determinism types less fitted to survive.” (p.28).

Cherubim by Michelangelo

30 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 Natural selection operates by eliminating biologically expectations: it will induce us to expect fire when we see smoke harmful responses and preserving responses which tend to aid just as it once induced us to expect that all swans would be survival. But how can any biological improvement in white (until we saw a black one), or that water would responses ever turn them into acts of logical always boil at 100ºC (until we tried a picnic insight – into a power of seeing how a on a mountain). However, such expecta- valid argument’s conclusion must tions were not valid inferences for follow from its premises? The rela- they turned out to be false: tion between response and stimu- lus is categorically different “The assumption that things which from that between knowledge have been conjoined in the past will and the truth known: “Our always be conjoined in the future physical vision is a far more is the guiding principle not of useful response to light rational but of animal behaviour. than that of the cruder Reason comes in precisely when organisms which have only you make the inference ‘Since a photo-sensitive spot. But always conjoined, therefore neither this improvement probably connected’ and go on nor any possible improve- to attempt the discovery of the ments we can suppose could connection. When you have dis- bring it an inch nearer to covered what smoke is, you may being knowledge of light. It is then be able to replace the mere admittedly something without expectation by a genuine inference. which we could not have had that Till this is done, reason recognises the knowledge. But the knowledge is expectation as a mere expectation.” achieved by experiments and inferences (Miracles, p.30) from them, not by refinement of the response. It is not men with specially good Conclusions eyes who know about light, but men who have studied We granted earlier that Lewis’s primary argument is the relevant sciences.” (Miracles, p.29.) logically valid, but doubted the truth of its second premise. Vision is a physical or bodily response, but our psychological Isn’t it possible, we asked, even if naturalism is true, that an responses to our environment – our curiosities, aversions, ability to think rationally could be the product of natural selec- delights, expectations – might likewise be indefinitely tion, or even of experience? Lewis’s answer is firmly negative. improved without ever becoming anything other than Evolution and/or experience equipped us to foresee causal con- responses. If our psychological responses (in contrast to our nections between events, but not to see how things outside our logical insight) were slowly perfected by natural selection, then own minds logically ‘must’ be. The power of reason is there- that might count as a different method for achieving survival – fore not part of the system of nature. as an ‘alternative to reason’: “A conditioning which secured Did Lewis succeed in producing possibly the first ever logi- that we never felt delight except in the useful or aversion save cally sound proof of the supernatural – “something beyond from the dangerous, and that degrees of both were exquisitely Nature” which operates whenever we reason? Almost by defi- proportional to the degree of real utility or danger in the nition, a sound argument is one that persuades or convinces object, might serve us as well as reason or in some circum- you to believe that its conclusion is true. Are you persuaded? stances better,” Lewis writes on p.29. But even if such refine- It comes down to an essentially personal judgement. ment of our non-rational psychological responses did happen, If, as I believe, Lewis is right that human reason wasn’t made it could never convert them from being mere reactions to a cause by either natural selection or experience, then is it a ‘given’, just into being valid inferences. as the fundamental physical constants are givens? Both the Finally Lewis considers the possibility that although reason constants and reason seem to be distinct from nature. Like the did not evolve through natural selection, it may have been pro- constants, reason is a prerequisite of science: it is its most basic duced naturalistically through experience – originally individual tool – for without rational inference there could be no truth, experience, but the results passed on by tradition and instruc- and so no science could be true. And reason is not only as nec- tion. For instance, if we often experienced finding fire (or the essary as the physical constants; it is also – again like them – uni- remains of a fire) where we had seen smoke, this would condi- versal and constant. It is certainly true that without the combi- tion us to expect fire whenever we saw smoke. This expecta- nation of the physical constants and human reason, life as we tion, expressed as ‘If smoke, then fire’ has become what we call now know it on this planet could not have come into being. an inference. “It might be held that this [conjunction of experi- © STUART GREENSTREET 2012 ences], in the course of millennia, could conjure the mental Stuart Greenstreet, a business manager and writer by trade, began behaviour we call reason – in other words, the practice of philosophy in the evenings at Birkbeck College, London, before gradu- inference – out of mental behaviour which was not originally ating from the Open University, followed by further philosophy at the rational” Lewis writes on p.29. Thus experience produces University of Sussex.

May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 31 Brief Lives Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) Graeme Garrard observes the life of a paradoxical revolutionary hero ccording to a popular legend the philosopher Immanuel philosophes of the eighteenth century Enlightenment, and con- Kant was so punctual that his neighbours would set their tributed to the Encyclopédie, yet in his first major work he clocks by his daily constitutional. Allegedly, the only praised ignorance and argued that the cultivation of the arts time he deviated from this rigid pattern was when he received a and sciences is detrimental to morals. He is famous as a propo- Acopy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s treatise on education, Emile nent of democracy, yet claimed in his main political work, The (1762). The book so captivated him that he missed his after- Social Contract (1762) that the only place where democracy had noon walk for several days. Furthermore, the only piece of art any realistic prospect in contemporary Europe was in remote that the austere Kant kept in his home was a portrait of Corsica. Many of his most fervent and devoted admirers while Rousseau, which hung above his writing desk. He claimed that he was alive were women and aristocrats, yet he was deeply “Rousseau set me right” by teaching him to honour mankind. misogynistic, and professed to dislike and disapprove of Another German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, was not wealthy ‘grandees’ (“I hate their rank, their hardness, their so impressed. At the end of the nineteenth century he prejudices, their pettiness, and all their vices”). He was one of denounced Rousseau as a tarantula who poisoned Kant with his the most admired and mesmerisingly eloquent writers of his moralising. This dim view of Rousseau’s legacy cast a long age, yet he had little formal education and married an illiterate shadow over much of twentieth century ethics, particularly for seamstress. He was a best-selling author and composer, yet he a generation of liberals such as Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper and wrote that “books are good for nothing” and admired ancient Jacob Talmon, for whom Rousseau was a proponent of ‘totali- Sparta, which tolerated neither writing nor music. tarian democracy’. However, in the four decades leading up to Rousseau’s most successful opera, Le Devin du Village (The the 300th anniversary of his birth on the 28th June 2012, Village Soothsayer), was a huge hit when it was premiered in Rousseau’s reputation has waxed again, in conjunction with the Paris in 1752, but it is almost never performed now. (Louis growing sophistication of Rousseau scholarship. XV loved it, and wanted to offer its composer a lifetime pen- When Rousseau arrived in Paris in 1742 he was a poor, sion, but Rousseau had fled, fearing that he might wet himself unknown, unpublished, thirty-year-old Genevan with no job, in the king’s presence owing to a disease of his bladder.) And relatively little formal education (although well-read), whose Rousseau’s writings on music, extolling the virtues of Italian mother had died in childbirth, and whose watchmaker father opera over French, are today known to only a few scholars. had abandoned him when he was ten years old. By the time While his sentimental epistolary novel, Julie, or the New Héloïse Rousseau died in 1778 he was a best-selling novelist, an (1761), was probably the biggest best-seller of the eighteenth extremely successful opera composer, the author of numerous century, it is now little read. Emile, which Rousseau described books and essays on education, ethics, music, religion, lan- as the “best as well as the most important of the works I have guage, political philosophy, political economy and even botany, written,” had a vast influence on the theory and practice of the rival of Voltaire, erstwhile friend of Diderot, d’Alembert education. However, its controversial assumptions and pre- and Hume (all of whom eventually denounced him as mad, as scriptions have long since been superceded by rival pedagogies. did Nietzsche), and one of the most famous men in Europe. Yet Rousseau’s relevance endures despite all the changes which Before the end of the century, Rousseau’s body lay in the Pan- have made so much of what he did unfashionable to contempo- théon in Paris, immediately opposite his arch-nemesis Voltaire, rary tastes. Many of his other works, above all in cultural who died just over a month before him. It had been placed anthropology and political philosophy, are classics that con- there by the Jacobins to honour a ‘father of the French Revolu- tinue to resonate very powerfully with readers. tion’. By the twentieth century, Rousseau had been blamed for One such example is Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origins of influencing if not actually causing romanticism, anarchism, Inequality (1755). Although it was not awarded first prize by nationalism and even totalitarianism. He remains one of the the Academy of Dijon, for which it was written, it caused a sen- most important, influential, divisive and widely-read thinkers sation when it was published, and has had a huge and lasting in the history of ideas. impact on natural and social science. It begins with an account of man in a pre-social ‘state of nature’. This account, while A Man of Paradoxes speculative and hypothetical, was enormously influential on Rousseau once described himself as a ‘man of paradoxes’, debates about human nature and the origins of social and polit- which is not difficult to believe of someone who famously ical life at a time when there was very little empirical evidence claimed that it is sometimes necessary to force men to be free. on these subjects and the gap between science and political Other evidence concurs. He wrote an influential treatise on philosophy was far less broad than it is today. The Discourse’s education of the young, yet put all five of his children into a idyllic picture of the original human beings as innocent, foundling home as soon as they were born (where probably simple, happy, peaceful, isolated and benignly selfish prompted most of them died). He claimed to have “the greatest aversion Voltaire sarcastically to thank Rousseau for his “new book to revolutions,” yet inspired the leaders of the French Revolu- against the human species.” The second part of the book tion, such as Robespierre and Saint-Just, who hailed him as sketches the advent of society, and with it the emergence of an their hero. Rousseau is commonly included among the leading aggressive form of selfishness (amour-propre) that has led to a

32 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 Brief Lives Rousseau in a solitary reverie have never liked England or the English,” he states in his Confessions (1770). In The Social Contract he had writ- ten that although England regards itself as free, “it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of its Members of Parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing.” Even so, the English gave Rousseau sanctuary when few others would, for which he displayed his characteristic ingrati- tude, as his friend David Hume was to discover to his amazement and disgust when Rousseau spurned the offer of a pension from King George III, just as he had done to Louis XV. The Social Contract is Rousseau’s most enduringly popu- lar, widely-read and influential book. It ranks among the great classics of Western political philosophy, along- side Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Politics, Machiavelli’s The Prince, Hobbes’s Leviathan, Locke’s Two Treatises of Gov- ernment, Marx’s Communist Manifesto and Mill’s On Lib- erty. It has been continuously in print for two and a half centuries, inspiring generations of democrats and radi- cals as much as it has infuriated and provoked tradition- alists and conservatives. It is a unique blend of ancient and modern elements which is difficult to classify, and it has vexed its interpreters since it was published. In it Rousseau argues that both the monarchical abso- lutism of France’s then ancien régime, and the enlight- ened despotism favoured by philosophes like Voltaire, are inconsistent with the ‘principles of political right’ (the book’s subtitle) which he sets out in the book. Rousseau Hobbesian war of all against all dominated by inequality, injus- started from the assumption made by many near-contempo- tice and exploitation. rary political thinkers, such as Hobbes and Locke, that politi- cal life is unnatural and must therefore be based on consent The Social Contract and human artifice. In this view he was fully modern; but his Rousseau’s Social Contract, published 250 years ago in April models of political consent were ancient Sparta and republican 1762, sets out a solution to the dilemma of civilisation posed in Rome, because he held they understood best how to generate a the Discourse. It was immediately condemned by the Paris Par- sense of public spirit, without which the general will essential lement, and placed on the Vatican’s Index of Forbidden Books, to a well-functioning polity cannot be formed. He was thus a next to works by fellow philosophes such as Voltaire, Hume, modern with the soul of an ancient who opposed liberalism with Diderot, Montesquieu, and d’Alembert. (This did not prevent his own unique form of modernity. Voltaire from declaring that the ‘monster’ had brought all In the first line of the first chapter of The Social Contract these troubles on himself.) No one was surprised by any of Rousseau famously declares that “man is born free, and every- this, least of all Rousseau. But Rousseau was shocked and dis- where he is in chains.” Yet contrary to the claims of many mayed when the book was banned in his native Geneva. The writers (including Voltaire), it was never Rousseau’s intention authorities ordered it burned and its author arrested if he ever to break the bonds of political life and return us to some idyllic dared to set foot in the city again. This wounded Rousseau pre-political state of nature. Rather, he shows how he thinks deeply, since he had always been a proud citizen of Geneva – political bonds can be made legitimate – meaning that sover- he signed his books (including The Social Contract)‘Citoyen de eign and subject are no longer alienated from each other. Such Genève’, and said to the Genovese that “I took your constitu- alienation is typical of despotic rule, where power is imposed tion as my model.” Rousseau blamed Voltaire, then resident in by might rather than by right. Rousseau gave the name ‘citi- Geneva, for whipping up opposition to him in an unholy zen’ to those who help make the laws to which they are sub- alliance with the religious bigots who dominated the city. ject. By together making their own laws, each citizen “obeys The Social Contract was even proscribed in relatively liberal, no one but himself, and remains as free as before.” This tolerant Amsterdam. It seemed as though all of continental Rousseau regarded as the only legitimate form of politics. Europe – Catholics and Protestants, secularists and religious According to Rousseau, then, sovereignty should reside fanatics, Jesuits and Jansenists, philosophes and anti-philosophes – with the people, in the form of the general will, which ought to had united against Jean-Jacques, who was forced to flee. He be the source of the law’s legitimacy. The general will is not a even considered suicide. Rousseau’s desperation was so great mere aggregation of the wills of selfish individuals (which that he actually moved to England, a nation he despised: “I Rousseau called “the will of all”). Rather, the general will is

May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 33 Brief Lives

rary conditions. He thought they were only applic-

Mostly ‘armless: able in relatively small, cohesive city-states of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau kind commonly found in ancient Greece; not the large, sophisticated nation-states of modern Europe. That is why it is very unlikely he would have endorsed the French Revolutionary attempt to implement his theories, had he lived to see it – even though he correctly predicted a coming age of revolutions which would engulf Europe. Whereas Thomas Jefferson believed that “the gov- ernment that governs least governs best,” Rousseau set out to legitimate strong government rather than to limit it. Indeed, for Rousseau, to limit a legiti- mate government would be to limit political right itself, which is contrary to justice. His objection to Thomas Hobbes was not that Hobbes defended an absolute sovereign, it is that he defended an illegiti- mate sovereign. Yet the American Founding Fathers fundamentally mistrusted government, and there- fore designed a political system that was deliberately weak and limited by ‘checks and balances’. This is why John Locke was a more important influence on the American Revolution than Rousseau, who inspired the French Revolutionaries. The alienation Rousseau experienced from the enlightened civilisation in which he was immersed appears to have become complete in the last decade of his life, when he sought to escape from the com- pany of men entirely, in an apparent effort to pre- serve his own integrity in an age of utter corrup- formed when citizens ask themselves what is in the common tion. He had finally concluded that there is “no hope of reme- interest rather than what is good for them specifically as indi- dies” and that the words ‘fatherland’ and ‘citizen’ should be viduals. However, Rousseau believed that such public-spirit- “effaced from modern languages.” He ended his days in total edness is wholly unnatural, since we are naturally selfish crea- resignation and pessimism. His last work, the unfinished tures. It must therefore be cultivated artificially, by means of a Reveries of a Solitary Walker, was written in the two years before set of institutions and practices whose purpose is to promote he died, and suggests his conclusion that escape from civilisa- ‘sentiments of sociability’. The most notorious of these pro- tion into rustic isolation is the only real option for the man of posed institutions is what Rousseau calls the ‘civil religion’, virtue. His strong identification with Socrates is also best which makes each individual love his duty to the polity more understood in terms of his self-conception as a good man than to himself. Rousseau believed that Christianity is com- living in a wicked age, attacked and vilified by contemporaries pletely unsuited to this role, since it preaches “only servitude blinded to his goodness by their own vice. In his late best-sell- and submission.” In fact, he says that he knows “nothing more ing masterpiece The Confessions, a cry from the heart written contrary to the social spirit” and “favourable to tyranny” than during the troubled and difficult years following the publica- Christianity. Little wonder that The Social Contract was banned tion of his Social Contract and Emile, Rousseau offers readers an both in Calvinist Geneva and in Catholic Paris. irresistibly endearing and often shockingly frank self-portrait Another device that Rousseau says is necessary to induce which inspired an entire generation of romantic writers when naturally selfish individuals to think of the public good is what it was published posthumously. he calls ‘the legislator’. Such rare individuals (he mentions It is a very grave mistake to dismiss Rousseau’s ideas as the Moses and Lycurgus as examples) invoke the divine to per- ravings of a lunatic, as so many of his enemies and detractors suade people to subordinate their particular interests to the have done over the centuries. He was undoubtedly an eccentric common interest, this being a precondition for the sover- and often very difficult character, prone to bouts of paranoia – eignty of the general will. although he was a paranoiac with many powerful enemies who actively persecuted him. But the power and eloquence of his Legacies writing have inspired many generations of the rebels, malcon- Despite his reputation as a naïve idealist with both feet tents, misfits and outsiders who share his profound disquiet planted firmly in the clouds, Rousseau was keenly aware of just about the place of the individual in the modern age. how unlikely it was that the political principles he prescribed © DR GRAEME GARRARD 2012 in The Social Contract would ever be adopted under contempo- Graeme Garrard is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Cardiff University.

34 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 Emily Brontë Food for – Philosopher Thought Tim Madigan philosophizes poetically

ENOUGH of Thought, Philosopher; points-of-view. This bio- portrait of Too long hast thou been dreaming graphical information helps Emily by Unlightened, in this chamber drear – them to better understand the Branwell While summer’s sun is beaming – points made by Woolf, that Space-sweeping soul, what sad refrain thoughtful writers need not Concludes thy musings once again? only time to reflect, but also – Emily Brontë (1818-1848), ‘The Philosopher’ suitable space in which to do their work – conditions that until quite s one who has spent many a summer’s day reading phi- recently were generally denied to losophy in ‘chambers drear’, I can empathize with female members of society. In this sense, AEmily Brontë’s poem. For several years now I have Emily Brontë represents the triumph of the made use of her poetry when teaching Introduction to Philos- imagination over stultifying social conditions. She was obvi- ophy classes, in order to show that some of the deepest issues ously touched by the diverse philosophical movements sweep- in this discipline can best be expressed in non-prosaic terms. ing England during her lifetime (which her father, the Rev- One of the questions we consider in class is why there have erend Patrick Brontë, avidly discussed with her, his favored been so few female philosophers until fairly recent times. We child), and in her own way she commented upon these move- first read Plato’s arguments in The Republic as to why there ments through her creative fiction (see below for a vivid exam- cannot be a truly just society until all citizens, both male and ple of her personal credo). female, are given equal opportunity to excel; then we study The American philosopher John Dewey once remarked that Aristotle’s rejoinder that such a policy would be folly, since when women philosophers became prominent, the very notion women are by nature inferior to men, intellectually and physi- of what constitutes philosophical inquiry would be greatly cally. This point is reiterated later in the course by selections expanded. By insisting on their right to be heard, and by from the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, a vociferous demonstrating their keen powers of observation, the Brontë misogynist, who argued that women were really just big chil- sisters have had a powerful and enduring impact on the history dren, unable to understand abstract thought. (Ironically, his of thought. It is a pleasure for me to be able to introduce my mother was one of the first female novelists to publish under students to their writings, and in particular to Emily’s poetry, her own name. Understandably, she did not get along very which ably demonstrates the folly of claiming that women well with her son.) To balance these arguments for women’s cannot understand or write metaphysical works. inherent inferiority, I then have the class read several poems by Emily Brontë, including ‘The Old Stoic’ (below), ‘I See THE OLD STOIC Around Me Tombstones Grey’, and the above-quoted ‘The by Emily Brontë (1818-1848) Philosopher’. I ask the students to discuss their personal interpretations of these works and how these might relate to RICHES I hold in light esteem, the views of Aristotle and Schopenhauer. Following this, I And Love I laugh to scorn; have them read a selection from Virginia Woolf’s seminal And lust of fame was but a dream essay, ‘A Room of One’s Own’. In this, Woolf, the daughter of That vanish’d with the morn: prominent Victorian philosopher Leslie Stephen, argued that And, if I pray, the only prayer women had been systematically banned from all academic That moves my lips for me fields and denied a proper education. She also made several Is, “Leave the heart that now I bear, references to the Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, And give me liberty!” and gave them credit for transcending their own limited hori- Yea, as my swift days near their goal, zons and for addressing issues previously thought to be off- ‘Tis all that I implore: limits to members of ‘the fairer sex’. In life and death a chainless soul, Most of my students (although not as many as I would With courage to endure. wish) are already familiar with Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights from their high school English classes – a familiarity © DR TIMOTHY J. MADIGAN 2012 they do not have with the philosophers I introduce them to. Tim Madigan has been a member of the International Brontë Society They also seem to be interested in the personal story of the for over 25 years, and admits a special affection for Emily’s Brontë sisters and their struggle to express their unique misbegotten brother, Branwell.

May/June 2012G Philosophy Now 35 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!

Don’t Let Life Drag On it will not be sufficient that our descen- tyrants back to life. Then immortality DEAR EDITOR: Surfing on my iPad last dants extend their lives indefinitely – the would guarantee perpetual tyranny. His- week, a lucky wave carried me to Philoso- advance of technology must continue, tory throws up a host of unsavoury char- phy Now, a lode of gold for me to plun- eventually to recreate the past and all the acters only death was able to remove. der, ponder and enjoy. Oh how we love people who previously perished. HENRY LYNAM,DUBLIN to tie ourselves up in linguistic tangles of If the materialists are correct, and my Humpty-Dumpty verbiage defining self-awareness can be mapped to physical Epistolary Environmentalism what other words really mean in phenomena in this universe, then it must DEAR EDITOR: Re the ‘Sustainability’ attempts to express ideas! be possible to recreate this system artifi- theme in Issue 88: Popular language use I am impelled to offer my thoughts on cially. It follows then that I – not a is not instructive for the philosopher, Nick Bostrom’s ‘The Fable of the replica or simulacrum, but the actual me but the debasement of meaning in such Dragon-Tyrant’ in the last issue, where – could thus with sufficiently advanced terms as ‘sustainability’, ‘environment’, the dragon represents death. Aged 91, I technology be restored to being. It is and what is ‘natural’ is disconcerting. haven’t long before boarding my own interesting to note that if such technol- These terms are now tossed around ‘dragon train’. I am hoping my trip will ogy were possible, then the ‘End Times’ in commerce, the media and by politi- be easy, and not horribly prolonged. I stories of major religions – the idea of cians to desperately project meaningful- wish that booking a ticket on a high the resurrection of the dead and a Judge- ness. Ministers of Finance worldwide speed Pullman Car were possible in that ment Day – would actually come to pass, use the term ‘sustainability’ in almost country – ideal for one who believes that for we would not resurrect all previous every speech (the Greek Minister of death is absolute and ends in utter obliv- human beings, save perhaps just long Finance excepted). The word ‘environ- ion, and therefore sees no point in enough to tell some that for the evil they ment’ seems to refer in popular language enduring an arduous journey. (Since committed in their lives, they will be to a person’s or community’s immediate 1993 I have been a member of the Vol- denied the opportunity for life extension. experienced physical surroundings: untary Euthanasia Society, which has, in (This also eliminates the urgency for urbanites see ‘the environment’ as their these days of catchy sound-bites, been overcoming death Bostrom discusses.) citified world, as if smog is a city thing, renamed Dignity in Dying. They lobby If all generations are given the option not a sky thing. All sorts of products are for legal rational alternative ways to deal of extending life, perhaps indefinitely, labelled ‘natural’ although they are syn- with our mortality.) But as the late mar- then the issue of what to do with one’s thetically engineered to the hilt. Isn’t vellous Joyce Grenfell says, in the char- life becomes universal. I suggest that a ‘nature’ that which humanity has not acter of a professor’s wife giving tea and new culture of extended living would brought into existence, redesigned or a sympathetic ear to an anarchist college then emerge, and so some of the issues reconfigured, changed, or consumed? student: “Yes... but I DO worry about Midgley discusses would become for the Humanity itself is part of nature, since who will look after the drains” – a nugget most part moot. I can imagine any num- humanity’s make-up is partly the result of philosophy in a few words. ber of ways I would spend multiple life- of processes humanity did not create. The moral of my Dragon-Tyrant times. We could evolve societies that Some decades back, at the beginning Fable is: good quality far outstrips quan- allow individuals to work in one career of the activist environmental movement, tity in life, but youth or physical good for 25 years, say, then train for another the term ‘sustainability’ was employed to health are no guarantee of comfort and for five years. We could witness many lead us to a deeply philosophical question: happiness. They of themselves do not major historical events first-hand, per- Is modern humanity able to maintain a provide purpose, nor remove dullness, haps recreate prehistoric times, and so balanced relationship with nature, all the drudgery, sometimes even degradation – on. There would be no reason to be bored. while meeting its basic needs to produce unhappily experienced by probably the THOMAS E. DELANEY,HOUSTON, TX and consume; or are humanity’s wild con- large majority, with at best brief win- sumption levels, unregulated production dows of pleasure and satisfaction, as we DEAR EDITOR: I read with interest Nick methods and resource exhaustion leading scramble in the Darwinian battle of life. Bostrom’s article ‘The Fable of the to a profound imbalance that imperils ARTHUR MORRIS,EASTBOURNE Dragon-Tyrant’ in Issue 89. But does he future generations? We had to think not miss the main benefit of death, i.e., about the state of nature, humanity’s DEAR EDITOR: Concerning Nick disposing of tyrants when all else fails? place in it, and the (im)morality of Bostrom’s and Mary Midgley’s some- Imagine if the dragon people had per- human consumption patterns. what opposing viewpoints on mortality: fected a way to bring dead dragon- Humanity dwells in and is part of

36 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 Letters nature, yet such is humanity’s capability demonstrated that stuff really is made of and we would all agree) it is impermissi- to think and create, that this can alter our atoms. Philosophers had always fallen ble, in fact repulsive, for monsters like relationship with nature. We also seem out about the shape and size of the uni- Mengele to do the same to a person? on the way to altering human nature. The verse too – until science allowed us to The problem is that if I choose to common use of the term ‘sustainability’ measure it, date it, and move the Earth draw my ethical circle with a certain cannot sustain such lines of thought. The from the centre of it. Now philosophers diameter, uninfluenced by a possible vic- debased current meaning seems to evoke ponder the relationship between brain tim’s capacity to suffer, what answer do I this line of thinking only: Can we protect and consciousness, but with the same have for someone who chooses to draw the status quo of material wealth and com- problem – the lack of the tools to under- their circle even smaller – around their fort and continue to spend so much, con- stand it. Science is the best (and in fact race, gender, religion, sexuality, able- sume so much, etc? No wonder politi- the only) tool we have to try and under- bodiedness, inner-city gang membership, cians’ speechwriters everywhere junk stand consciousness, but we have to be even? As Bentham famously wrote: “The their speeches with such terms. patient; we’re not there yet. question is not Can they reason? nor Can I keep wondering why the discipline It’s ironic that in the same issue there they talk? but Can they suffer?” He said ‘philosophy of nature’ is on the ropes. were several articles about the damage that about animals, but it could equally Could it be that popular language use is humans are causing to ecosystems. As it have been about people with advanced diverting philosophers’ reflection from is the ecology that keeps us alive on this dementia. Including all humans in our the substance of the matter? planet, we need to find a way of existing ethical ambit is logical because we have CHRISTOPHER GILL,NOVA SCOTIA that does not damage it. The globalised, shared interests; but including only growth-obsessed capitalism of corporate- humans is not self-evidently correct. It DEAR EDITOR: In ‘Three Challenges For controlled ‘democracy’ is clearly not it. needs justification – based on ethical Environmental Philosophy’, in Issue 88, Surely it is the task of philosophers to principle, not on self-interest, or on mere Jim Moran makes reference to Albert come up with a better one, instead of solidarity with one’s own. Should we Schweitzer’s ‘doctrine’ of ‘Reverence for wasting time and energy pondering teach our children that causing pain, even Life’. I have some doubt as to whether problems for which only science can pro- great pain, to others of perceived lesser Schweitzer would refer to his founda- vide answers – eventually. value can be acceptable if our group tional ethic as a ‘doctrine’, since it was DAVE DARBY,WINSLOW,BUCKS stands to benefit – in other words, that meant as a broad guide to behaviour might is right? If so, where do we draw rather than as a formal principle. The DEAR EDITOR: Raymond Tallis (‘A Con- the line? And how does this fit into tradi- ethic is also rather vapid unless under- versation with my Neighbour’, Issue 88) tional ethical frameworks, under which stood in relation to Schweitzer’s world- misunderstands the classical animal might is assuredly not right? Armed with view, which saw nature as a stark arena of rights position, which does not need to the developed consciousness which Pro- competition and violence and without assert that non-human animals are of fessor Tallis so champions, one would revelation as to its ultimate meaning, at equal value to human animals. Judging hope that humankind can do better, both least in human terms. Allied to this relative value is in fact a mug’s game, ethically and scientifically. weltanschauung is the idea of the will-to- because there are no objective criteria to DAVID THOMAS,CHOBHAM,SURREY live as being universal in all living things, help us: rather, it depends who you ask, enabling human beings to find common person A or person B; or person A or Meaningful, Meaningful, ground with other species. Schweitzer’s dog B. But the critical question is why Everything Is Meaningful project encapsulated in the aphorism someone of greater moral value (assum- DEAR EDITOR: Steven Anderson’s article, ‘Reverence for Life’ is at one level practi- ing this could be established) is morally ‘The Meaning of Meaning’ (Issue 88), cal, in terms of kindness to all life, and at permitted to deliberately cause suffering was excellent. Yet I believe there is even another mystical, in its being symbolic of to those he or she considers of less value. more to say than Anderson wrote of. deference to and sharing in the common Professor Tallis fails to address this fun- The question is: Is there is an objec- experience of life. It is a shame that this damental issue. Instead, he chooses to tive meaning to existence which can be great thinker is not better known in our draw his circle of ethical concern around revealed through logical analysis? I occa- time, for his philosophy is sorely needed. his own species, and justifies the cruel sionally use ‘freedom’ and ‘happiness’ as PETER MARSTIN,CANBERRA exploitation of those falling outside the being synonymous with meaning. So, is circle, at least in some circumstances, meaning (happiness) a function of logic? Aping Tallis such as medical research. Tempting, no As Kant once said, “Happiness is an DEAR EDITOR: Daryn Green’s review in doubt; but is it consistent with principle? ideal, not of reason, but of imagination.” PN 88 of Aping Mankind by Raymond Suffering lies at the core of ethics – There is no one objectively correct Tallis reminded me of the ancient Greek we have ethical codes only because oth- meaning. Consequently, I must proceed philosophers’ obsession with finding out ers may be adversely affected by our with relativism. Dr Anderson’s students what stuff is made of, even though they behaviour (or, indeed, positively). Prof presupposed that meaning must refer to didn’t have the tools to find out. Dem- Tallis does not dispute that animals, existence as a whole. The logical conclu- ocritus secured his place in history by including lab animals, are sentient. So sion was then that a divine source gives nailing his name to his atomic theory, why is it permissible to cause suffering to meaning to the world. But I will use two but that was a fluke, a lucky guess. For a lab animal, non-consensually and for characters, David and Jake, to demon- knowledge we had to wait until science someone else’s benefit, when (as he says, strate a sense of meaning that goes

May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 37 Letters

beyond this impasse of cold logic. the idea of a meaningless universe mean- But the idea that each “individual’s David is a linguistic philosopher who ingless. We give the universe meaning actions, omissions, and everyday life... [is] feels that ‘meaning’ is only a concept. just by existing; and if there is something worthy of study in its own right” would He cannot get past the word. But Dave’s grander in the scheme of things, then we make the historian’s job impossible. Man- friend Jake does not believe that. How- fulfill it by living our lives rather than by ifestly, it cannot be done. I assume this is ever, Jake’s situation is not good. He contemplating it. In other words, if there a mere rhetorical flourish, aimed at pro- does not have a steady job: he’s a down- is a greater meaning, it’s not ours to know. moting the Annales approach; but as I and-out writer who makes some money PAUL MEALING,MELBOURNE have already pointed out, this idea is by translating novels into English for a nothing new. History from below is alive French writer. He doesn’t make com- History Is A Thing Of The Past and well (I recommend the excellent mitments to women, and is always trying DEAR EDITOR: I confess to being baffled Britain After Rome by Robin Fleming to find places to live rent-free. He glides by Ben Adams’ article on history in Issue (2010) as a recent example), but to argue through life in a fantasy world. He’s lazy 88. What point is he trying to make? On that we are all equally important or influ- – yet feels that his lack of discipline and the one hand he appears to dismiss those ential to the flow of history appears to me his neglect of his talents are a real source who attempt to assign grand narratives to a pretty unsustainable position. of freedom, and hence meaning. How- history and suggests that it must be con- Having previously been dismissive of ever, as Jake loses his bearings, he begins cerned with the study of everyday people; the genre, the eminent historian Ian to see that his life lacks meaning, that is, on the other he says that “comprehen- Kershaw surprised himself by writing a authentic happiness. Thus a crack forms siveness must replace... localisation.” I’m two volume biography of Hitler. In the in his armor – a crack large enough to not sure these goals are compatible. introduction to the first volume (1998) let in a few shafts of light. Jake begins to Much of the article appears to be an he reflects: “No attempt to produce a see that he’s made some bad assump- attack on the notion of historical objectiv- comprehensive understanding of the tions about his activities; but he still has ity. However, I am not aware that many phenomenon of Nazism without doing enough insight to disagree with Dave historians today would pretend that his- justice to the ‘Hitler factor’ can hope to that meaning is only an idea. tory can ever be objective: that idea pretty succeed. But such an interpretation must Jake’s true freedom is hard won. Here much went out of the window with not only take full account of Hitler’s ide- gaining meaning involves a humbling orthodox Marxism. Instead, historians ological goals, his actions, and his per- knowledge of ourselves. When he finds accept that all conclusions are provisional. sonal input into the shaping of events; it this, unlike Dave, Jake absolutely knows Historians are also intensely partisan, must at the same time locate these within that meaning is more than just a word. and, like philosophers, frequently engage the social forces and political structures Thus Dr Anderson has not fully in quite vituperative disputes. The only which permitted, shaped, and promoted answered to my satisfaction the real historian Ben Adams actually quotes, the growth of a system that came problem with finding meaning; but I feel A.J.P.Taylor, is a case in point. His The increasingly to hinge on personalized, that some shafts of light have been Origins Of The Second World War (1961) absolute power – with the disastrous effects encountered. Meaning evidently was highly controversial. I’m not sure that flowed from it.” [my italics] This involves both the use of analysis, such as how many history books Ben Adams has appears to me a sound historical position, Dr Anderson employed, and the inner read recently, but they are often far from and not entirely objective! experience. If we could only fuse the two dispassionate: A People’s Tragedy by COLIN JENKINS, aspects, then perhaps goodness and free- Orlando Figes (1996), The Third Reich by HIGHAMS PARK,LONDON dom could become twin aspects of Michael Burleigh (2000), or White Heat meaning, all moving on the same path. by Dominic Sandbrook (2006), are all No Rush To Patent PATRICIA HERRON,SALEM,OREGON examples of accessible history written by DEAR EDITOR: professional historians who are passionate How to use time travel for space travel: DEAR EDITOR: I enjoyed Stephen about their subject matter and not afraid A) Build a time machine. Anderson’s discussion of ‘the Meaning to make their views known. B) Travel far enough into the future for of Meaning’ in Issue 88. But he appears The section entitled ‘A Brief History the target planet, star, etc to have moved to conclude that there are only two pos- Of History’ is misleadingly named. It says to your location in space. sibilities, which are polarised, which is a nothing about the schools of history that C) Of course, the target will be much bit like saying there are only two possi- have often fought each other over the past older now. Furthermore, creating a time bilities concerning consciousness: mate- 300 years or so. He debunks the ‘Great machine is probably more difficult than rialism or dualism. The polarised views Man (and Woman)’ approach to history making an interstellar spaceship. are that there is either no meaning to as though that were an innovation. In fact, KENNETH ENG,FLUSHING, NY existence, or meaning requires a supreme this approach has been under attack for being. The problem is that the only pur- over a hundred years. For instance, the Erratum pose this supreme being serves in the Annales School of History, which is very Thank you to everyone who wrote in argument is to give us meaning. In other much focused on history ‘from below’, to tell us that Bertrand Russell was words, the argument is a bit circular. has been thriving for decades. Theodore brought up in Pembroke Lodge, Rich- However, the fact that the universe Zeldin’s monumental five volume History mond Park, not Pembroke House, gave birth to life and consciousness, of France from 1848-1945 is an excellent (if Regent’s Park, as was wrongly stated even if only on one lonely planet, makes sometimes a little stodgy) example of this. in last issue’s Brief Life.

38 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 Question of the Month How Does Language Work? The following answers to the question of linguistic meaning each win a random book The human vocal tract can make a wide range of sounds, The other side of that coin is semantics – the meaning that’s which allows us to move beyond the grunts and shrieks of our understood. The question is, how is this meaning created??????? I primate cousins, at least some of the time. As many as fifty would argue that it is derived within the contexts of shared regions in the human brain are involved in language, control- activities or public actions, not just in the minds of individuals. ling the complex movements needed to produce speech, trans- When I speak I am not attaching a verbal sound as a label to lating vibrations in the air into neural activity in the brain to something going on in my mind. Rather, I am using a verbal hear, and manipulating the symbols that make up the thoughts sound which has a function in communication and has a place and ideas of our minds to reason. These adaptations of the in public behaviour. There is no private meaning. Meaning individual are all necessary for full language use, but language occurs within social activities, philosophy itself being one of isn’t much use to a solitary individual, and would never have those activities, with its own shared language; and its problems arisen were we not a social species. regarding meaning are the result of a misuse of language. But Sounds alone, of course, are not enough to create meaning, that’s a whole other issue. since a non-English speaker won’t understand the word ‘cat’ IVAN TRENGROVE,VICTOR HARBOR,SOUTH AUSTRALIA although they hear the sound. Language works by attaching a symbol e.g. ‘cat’ to the idea of a cat, which itself is produced by We could take the word ‘fork’, for example, and learn to say the reality to which it refers (ie, a cat). When language doesn’t it and spell it in a variety of foreign languages. We could even work, we can sometimes revert to pointing – say, at a cat. But make up our own word. However, regardless of the variety of this also requires shared intentionality, ie, a common recogni- identifying signs we could use, our understanding of the word tion that the pointing is about something. This perhaps tells us remains. We quickly realise that simply ‘identifying and nam- something about the origins of language, and how language ing’ is not how language works. How then, when learning a works at a very basic level. The small bands of hunter-gather- language, is it that we understand what the words mean? ers who first developed language would have first pointed to Wittgenstein advocated the idea that an account of the animals and objects in their environment. But given that mak- meaning of a word cannot be given without looking at the part ing physical movements in the line of sight of a predator is the word plays in our lives and speech behaviour. In what is dangerous, it’s far better to represent that action with a sound now famously known as his ‘Private Language Argument’, that can be whispered, like “Lion!” Wittgenstein attacks the idea that meaning is a mental process. JON WAINWRIGHT, BY EMAIL He uses the following example: if I attach the word ‘S’ to a (pri- vate) sensation, how do I know I’m using the word ‘S’ correctly Fish swim, birds fly, and people talk. How do we display this next time I want to refer to the sensation, since I would already talent for language? As Noam Chomsky argued, for language to have to know the meaning of ‘S’ to check my use of that word? work, there must be an innate biological linguistic capacity. We Thus, how could I know my use of a word is correct without are born with a ‘universal grammar’ in our brains, which is the having the external standard of a language community who are initial condition through which the grammars of specific lan- already using the word in an established, common way? Or, if I guages arise, and which allows us to learn particular languages. say ‘toe’ when I mean ‘thumb’ you can correct me, but I cannot This is the prime mover for all language. There are many correct myself. Language therefore cannot work solely in the other essential components in how language works: phonetics, private arena, as there is no criterion of practice or rule against morphology, etymology, pragmatics, graphology, lexicography which to check the private use of language. Thus, although it is and semiotics, to name but a few. I will look at what I consider absurd to suppose we could experience each other’s feelings, we to be the two most essential elements, philosophically speaking. can only understand what is meant when someone refers to Firstly, syntax, which encompasses the structure or form of a lan- being happy through the public criteria for ‘happiness’, such as guage – its grammar, rules of language and what generally goes smiling broadly while acting exhuberently. People identify to make up a well-formed sentence. Sounds not following the when someone is ‘happy’ due to the communal use of the word syntactical rules for structuring sentences are not words, for within the context of our lives and the behavioural manifesta- they follow no pattern which can allow us to derive any signifi- tion of ‘happiness’. In the words of Sir Anthony Kenny, “Lan- cance from them. However, if, as Ludwig Wittgenstein argued, guage is not my language, it is our language.” syntax is simply pure logic – logic being the foundation of MADELEINE MAGGS,BASINGSTOKE,HAMPSHIRE meaning in any language – and is essential to language, then by itself syntax is senseless or meaningless (sinnlos). For instance, Wtihuot lnagugae it wuold be ipmsosilbe to coodrnitae or saying “all bachelors are bachelors” doesn’t explain anything, fnutcoin as a scoeity. But how deos lnagugae wrok? even if it does display logical form (it’s a tautology). This also Cmouminaciton ivnloevs at laest two poelpe – smooene to applies to contradictions, which are meaningless. sepak and smooene to lsietn (tihs is one of the mian raeosns Syntax defines the structure upon which meaning is built. mnay piholoshpres bleieve taht lnagugae dsirpvoes slopsiism –

May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 39 the bleeif taht you are the olny mnid and the etnrie uinevsre, ing to point to – but more importantly, we cannot grasp their and eevyrhtnig in it is a fgiemnt of yuor iamignitaoin.) meaning without the word. Try thinking of the meaning of ‘con- The way we laern lnagugae has been udner dbetae for cneu- tested’ without bringing the word itself to mind. With such tires. Smoe agrue we hvae an inntae konlwdege of lnagugae abstractions, meanings and the words standing for them fuse. So ptaetnrs. One of the key peieces of eivedcne for tihs iade is taht in an important sense, language use is virtually inseparable from cihdlern, wehn laenrnig to sepak, use wrods or prhsaes scuh as what we intend to convey – signifiers co-exist with their signi- “I did-ed it” as oppsoed to “I’ve done it”. If tehre is no inntae fieds and their referents. This is apparent when we try to learn a konewelgde of lnagugae and we laern lnagugae pulyre trhuogh word: we use the word fluently when meaning and word appear epxrinece, tihs sguegtss taht tehy hvae haerd lnagugae uesd in no longer separate, but rather to coalesce. taht way bferoe, wihch celraly isn’t ture. COLIN BROOKES,WOODHOUSE EAVES,LEICESTERSHIRE Wtigtnetsien condisread the cnoecpt of a piravte lnagugae: a lnagugae olny you can udnretsnad. Hwoveer, it’s esay to ciriticse In addressing the question, I want to extend it to How does taht cnoecpt, as we’ve arlaedy siad taht for a lnagugae to fnut- language work in the human mind? Outside that context, lan- coin as a lnauagge, tehre has to be an itnrecaiton bteewen at guage is fairly straightforward: it’s portraying information via laest two poelpe – one to tlak, one to lsietn – and addtinolaly an symbols called words, and combining them in structures via udnretsnaidng. If lnagugae wree to ohtres jsut a sreeis of maeinl- grammatical rules. Any system doing these things is a language. gses nioess or lteetrs, cmouminaciton wuold be ipmsoislbe. A computer does this, producing linguistic output: but it cannot ISABEL CULLENS,SANDBACH,CHESHIRE understand it the way a human mind does (thus the Turing test for distinguishing between the two). That difference is the key The basic answer is that language works if the people to this difficult question. engaged are members of the same interpretive community or The difficulty is elucidated by our wondering what it might be network. But it is useful to ask: When does language not work? like to think without language, and sometimes struggling to put Two people using the same language can misunderstand one thoughts into words. What, exactly, is the thing (thought, per- another. Indeed, Person A and Person B may not even grasp ception, idea, feeling) that precedes its own linguistic expression? the fact they do not fully understand one another. But if it A computer represents information by encoding it using a becomes obvious to them, then A may think that B is using binary system of ones and zeroes. Our brains must do some- words (such as ‘God’) incorrectly. A may say that B is making a thing roughly analogous using neurons, although we haven’t yet ‘semantic’ mistake. A neo-pragmatist linguist influenced by cracked the code. And there are important differences between C.S. Peirce might correct A, and say that B is making a ‘prag- brains and computers. Neurons don’t only function like a com- matic’ mistake. The linguist will argue that every sign requires puter’s simple one/zero logic gates: many respond only to spe- both an interpretive community (the interpretant) and an opera- cific stimuli or sensory inputs. But the biggest difference (and tional definition of the meaning and applicability of that sign why computers fail the Turing test) is that computers lack a self – (the representant). Hence, there is a triadic (three-way) relation- which could be called a meta-program to make sense of linguis- ship between a sign, its semantics (its commonly understood tic output. Explaining how such consciousness works is of meaning) and its pragmatics (the ways in which people use the course a deep problem; but we do experience it as a system that sign). This triad can then constitute a dialectical progression, understands and synthesizes, in a global way, the sum total of where what was once the interpretant may become the repre- the relevant neuronal encodings, processing, and representa- sentant, and so forth. tions. That self operates when putting thoughts into words. J.I. HANS BAKKER, SEMIOTICSIGNS.COM,CANADA Words are representations of objects or concepts. A thought of heroism may arise in the brain and precede naming it; yet Language works by virtue of the relationships between it, us, thinking the word ‘heroism’ evokes a panoply of connotations. our minds, and the world. The philosophies of the later Thus words, as labels, act like keys or triggers for the penumbra Wittgenstein and of John Searle underpin this idea. We invest of mental associations each word entails. Hence we understand language with meaning by using the various representational words not merely in terms of their definitions, nor sentences functions of words strung together through the application of merely through literal meaning, but in a wide context bringing grammar, punctuation and syntax. As for the meaning of ‘repre- into play the entire mind, with all its personal history, memo- sentation’, it is helpful to borrow from the vocabulary of semi- ries, and psychology. Putting it differently, there’s a little otics, the science of signs. Ferdinand de Saussure, a founder of homunculus in your brain that understands thoughts employ- semiotics, points out that a signifier, say the word ‘horse’, when ing language, and passes that understanding along to you. used, brings to mind the concept ‘horse’ – the signified. The FRANK S. ROBINSON,ALBANY, NY horse itself, the thing that can kick you, is the referent. However, within language there are many occasions when The words of which language is composed have ‘dictionary’ there is no referent: for instance, with abstract nouns, preposi- or definitional meanings. For a computer these meanings are tions, conjunctions and interjections. So with ‘conspicuous’, irritatingly precise, and a computer will respond exactly as com- ‘before’, ‘in’, ‘and’, ‘but’, and ‘cheers!’, etc, we cannot point to manded. But most words incorporate nuances of meaning and what the words mean (as we may think we can with a horse in so may be understood by a human audience in a number of ways the world) although we typically do give example of a word’s according to the experience of the user and the context. use, as tools with particular functions in the language. The key to language lies in the agencies using language. Try The separation of signifier, signified and referent may be mis- thinking of yourself and others as musical instruments. Lan- leading. This is brought out where referents are absent. Take guage is the tool by which the instruments are tuned to each abstract words such as, ‘contrary’ and ‘mitigation’. There is noth- other. The particular language code is immaterial; language

40 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 How Does LanguageWork? works through its effect on the attuned audience. Language to the condition of satisfaction of their utterances. For instance, works best when a speaker is able to find the tunes the audience those expressing beliefs are committed to their truth, and those can recognize, including for communication with other species. making promises to their fulfillment. If we make a promise it is Each linguistic exchange generates thought in the listener, not to be easily discounted, because in making it we are simulta- which most likely will not be identical with the thought of the neously obliging ourselves to ensure that it is kept. speaker. The listener will assemble her understanding still using MAURICE JOHN FRYATT,SCARBOROUGH,ONTARIO words, and often with new insight. The response will show how well the audience understood, and further modify the thinking Linguistic meaning operates through a framework erected by of the speaker. Successive exchanges may be needed to achieve the synthesis of grammatically-well-formed elements. A basic perfect understanding between the parties. Over a lifetime, aspect is a common lexicon, in which the verbal symbols or each one of us becomes attuned to the general intention of a tokens which we bestow upon objects and ideas are recorded. ???? steadily increasing vocabulary, and will modify our own. So lan- Meaning is often successfully aided by higher semantic devices, guage works by successively re-tuning understanding between including irony, the implying of the opposite of what is meant in participants. Sadly, it works only in part. order to emphasise the true; another device is metaphor, when JAMES MALCOLM,WEST MOLESEY,SURREY phrases are used to refer to other ideas of which they are images. And where would the world of literature be without the simile? Schopenhauer divided our mental representations into the Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s description in The Rime of the Ancient intuitive – the whole of sensual experience – and the abstract – Mariner of a becalmed ship as “like a painted ship upon a painted concepts facilitated by reason. Reason has speech as its “first ocean” leaves no doubt as to the intended meaning. product and necessary instrument” and its most important The art world use other languages. An outstanding example achievements are attained through language, which is only of this is music, where tonality, harmony, melody and rhythm indirectly related to perception, via concepts. Concepts reside contrive to be meaningful to a receptive ear. Some attempts are in what neuroscientist Endel Tulving calls ‘semantic memory’ made to account for such meanings verbally, but sometimes it is which connects ideas to objects. E.O. Wilson sees concepts as more appropriate to bear in mind the closing line of Wittgen- units of human culture, describing a concept as a “node of stein’s Tractatus:“Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss semantic memory and its correlates in brain activity” (Con- man schweigen.” (“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must silience, p.148, 1998). He reminds us that even if our lexical be silent.”) communication were removed, we’d still have “a rich paralan- RAY PEARCE,DIDSBURY,MANCHESTER guage that communicates... basic needs: blushing… facial expressions… postures… our primate heritage.” Wilson also Language is existence manifest. It is the expression of an reminds us that language conveying information constructs cul- entity both inwardly and outwardly. For instance, when we see ture, and that some think that this culture has acquired “emer- an object in our environment, our awareness of the object gent properties no longer connected to the genetic and psycho- results from our brain converting sensory data into electrical logical processes that initiated it.” Individual minds could then impulses which our mind recognises as an image. This image, be seen as building blocks which can generate regularities in a or subsequent thoughts provoked by the image (which is inter- functioning language environment. Configurations of these nal language) can be communicated to others, with more or units then become meaning generators at a higher scale of less distortion, by using the language of the senses – sight, organization, that is, on a cultural level. sound, touch, smell and taste. JIM FARRER,KIRRIEMUIR,SCOTLAND Where there is consciousness, there is language. As far as animals use language, they are also conscious. Despite our dif- Sentences produce different kinds of speech acts: consisting ferences, both humans and animals read and respond to the for example in assertions and promises, respectively expressing messages created in their brains in a language appropriate to the states of belief and intention. And all speech acts have condi- their desires and capacities. The degree of consciousness, and tions of satisfaction. For example, the expression of a valid therefore the complexity of internal language, varies, as does belief is satisfied by its being true, and the making of a valid the ability to project this externally. promise is satisfied by its fulfillment. Speakers may also learn Rocks are another matter. Rocks are commonly held to be metacognitive skills, distinguishing, for instance, between beyond consciousness and language. Caution, however, is war- meanings of the same sentence across differing contexts. The ranted. For instance, a rock is perceived to be green when it meaning of ‘indexical’ words such as ‘I’ is not retained across reflects that colour back to the observer. In doing this, the rock contexts, for instance. communicates without being alive. Language then operates on It has been argued that proper names are used to pick out a both sides of the life-death divide. specific individual and lack any descriptive aspect. Conventions ADRIAN FITZGERALD,ADELAIDE also apply to syntax: we have selected the sentence as the basic unit of communication, and use the order of its words to con- The next question of the month is: What’s The Most vey its meaning while allowing individual words to retain theirs Important Question, and Why? The prize is a surprise – as demonstrated by the distinction between ‘The dog chased philosophy book. Justify your question in less than 400 the fox’ and ‘The fox chased the dog’. Apart from understand- words, please. Subject lines or envelopes should be marked ing a sentence’s references, a listener must also understand a ‘Question of the Month’, and must be received by 20th speaker’s purpose in using that sentence – assertive, promissory, August. Submissions must include physical address to have or otherwise – which is usually revealed by its syntax. a chance of getting a book. Submission implies permission Finally, whether they know it or not, speakers are committed to reproduce your answer physically and electronically.

How Does LanguageWork? May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 41 This issue we look at the intersection of nature and human behaviour. Bill Meacham finds Sam Harris’s book intriguing but frustrating, and Greg Linster is left howling Books at Mark Rowlands’ memoir of his pet wolf.

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, by Sam Harris

IN THIS book, Sam Harris, a noted New Atheist, asks us to consider two lives:

Life A: Imagine that you are an illiterate and homeless African woman whose hus- band has disappeared. You have just seen your seven-year-old daughter raped and murdered at the hands of drug-crazed sol- diers, and now you’re fearing for your life. Unfortunately, this is not an unusual predicament for you. From the moment you were born, your life has been marred by cruelty and violence.

Life B: Imagine that you are a respected professional in a wealthy country, married evidence that there is an objective way to away from the lowest depths of misery and toward to a loving, intelligent and charismatic determine what is morally good and bad. the heights of happiness for the greatest number of mate. Your employment is intellectually In fact, as the subtitle of the book indicates, people.” (p.28) stimulating and pays you very well. For he claims that scientific inquiry can tell us decades your wealth and social connections what we should and should not value. There may be problems about the have allowed you immense personal satis- Harris feels he can say this because he details, but the overall goal of peaks of faction from meaningful work which makes thinks that the proper meaning of ‘value’ happiness is quite achievable, says Harris. a real difference in the world. You and your with respect to human life – that is to say, Harris’s metaphor of a moral landscape closest family will live long, prosperous the proper meaning of morality – is that is instructive. By ‘moral landscape’, he lives, virtually untouched by crime, sudden which leads to human flourishing, which means the conceptual space of all possible bereavements, and other major misfortunes. means, living a satisfying life. Once he has experience. The peaks represent the made that move, the rest of his argument is heights of well-being, and the valleys the Which is the better life? We would all straightforward and cogent: careful obser- worst suffering. Different cultures and eth- no doubt say Life B. Harris takes this as vation of what in fact fulfils people is not a ical practices are different ways of moving matter of philosophical or religious debate, across this landscape – they can lead either it is a matter of scientific inquiry. We can up or down, and their effects are empiri- tell, objectively, what leads to happiness cally knowable. Harris notes that there is and what leads to misery. Facilitating good no single best way for people to live: there lives is what morality is about, says Harris, are many peaks in the moral landscape, not and that’s why science can tell us what we just one. Morality is here like food. There should value and what we should not. As is no one best food to eat, but there is still Harris says: an objective difference between poison and tasty, nutritious cuisine. Similarly, there is “human well-being entirely depends on events in no one best way to live; but there is an the world and on states of the human brain. objective, specifiable difference between Consequently, there must be scientific truths to be circumstances, actions and policies that known about it.” (p.2) “Once we see that a concern lead to lives like Life A, and those that lead for well-being (defined as deeply and as inclusively to lives such as Life B. If we want a life like as possible) is the only intelligible basis for morali- B, and if we want that life for others too, ty and values, we will see that there must be a sci- then we should pay attention to what sci- ence of morality... As we come to understand how entific inquiry tells us about how to get human beings can best collaborate and thrive in there, and take action accordingly. this world, science can help us find a path leading It is a striking and plausible vision. But

42 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 Book Reviews Books it depends, as I said, on the initial move, ered sources of value for the plants. How Off the Map which defines ‘moral’ as that which con- about amoebas? Adequate nutrients and There is a serious meta-ethical issue cerns well-being (and not just human well- water of a certain salinity are good for here which Harris does not adequately being, but that of all conscious creatures: amoebas, that is to say, of value for amoe- address. Throughout the history of philos- “maximizing the well-being of conscious bas. If plants or amoebas are not conscious, ophy there have been two competing creatures... [is] the only thing we can rea- yet can still be subject to things of value to domains of discourse regarding ethics, sonably value” (p.11)). To say that morality them, then Harris’s first argument fails. which have been called the Right and the is exclusively concerned with well-being is (We could be generous here and say that Good. (See for example Abraham Edel, a strong claim, and one which Harris does ‘conscious’ means something like ‘able to ‘Right and Good’, Dictionary of the History not quite pull off. take into account one’s surroundings’. This of Ideas, at www.etext.lib.virginia.edu, would encompass plant life. But Harris archived at www.bmeacham.com/whatswhat.) The Well-Being of the Argument does not say this.) The Right pertains to duty and obligation – Harris certainly recognizes that it is an Harris then asserts, “the concept of the obligation to obey moral rules which issue. His argument goes like this: ‘well-being’ captures all that we can intelli- are taken to be applicable universally and gibly value. And ‘morality’... really relates to independent of one’s own preferences. The 1) Talk about value makes sense only for the intentions and behaviors that affect the Good pertains to benefits and harms – that conscious creatures. well-being of conscious creatures.” (pp.12- is, to the consequences of actions, which may 2) Well-being is all that we can intelligibly 13). Again, he does not so much argue for be good or bad for the moral agent or value. this proposition as deny and disparage its others. Harris is solidly in the Goodness 3) Hence the only sense the concept of contraries. For example, to someone who camp, and he does an admirable job of ‘value’ has, is the well-being of conscious says that it is important to follow God’s law spelling out the implications of that posi- creatures, and that is what morality should for its own sake, Harris says they are really tion, particularly the value of a careful, dis- be concerned with. acting out of concern for the consequences ciplined, objective examination of reality, in to themselves, either in this life or another. short, of science, for determining what is He starts by claiming that consciousness To someone who says it is important to act good and bad, beneficial and detrimental, is the only intelligible domain of value. But according to duty, fairness, justice, or some for humans and other conscious creatures. he does not so much argue for this proposi- other moral principle, Harris says that this But he only asserts that Goodness trumps tion as deny its contrary: “I invite you to try can be so only because of the consequences Rightness – that it makes more sense or is to think of a source of value that has abso- of doing so. But he gives little evidence for more cogent to speak of morality in terms lutely nothing to do with the (actual or these assertions, and in fact admits that he is of benefits and harms than to speak of it in potential) experience of conscious beings.” defining his terms to mean this: “At bottom, terms of duty and obligation – he does not (p.12) Whatever such a source would be, it this is purely a semantic point: I am claim- demonstrate his thesis. would by definition have no effect on the ing that whatever answer a person gives to To his credit, Harris does address the experience of any creature, and hence would the question ‘Why is religion important?’ use of the terms ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. By be the least interesting thing in the universe. can be framed in terms of a concern about right he means ‘factually correct or true’, This first premise is problematic, but the someone’s well-being (whether misplaced and by wrong he means the opposite: “just problems are not fatal for his argument. or not).” (p.199) or “to say that we ought to as it is possible for individuals and groups Are plants conscious creatures? No? But treat children with kindness seems identical to be wrong about how best to maintain adequate sunlight, water and nutrients are to saying that everyone will tend to be their physical health, it is possible for them good for plants, and hence could be consid- better off if we do.” (p.38) to be wrong about how to maximize their personal and social well-being.” (p.62) Thus, claims about what is good for humans and other conscious creatures can be right or wrong in the sense of being true or false. So far, so good; but then Harris says that there are “right and wrong ways to move from our current position on the moral landscape toward one peak or the other...” (p.74) Now the term ‘right’ usually con- notes one-and-only: there is one right answer to the question ‘What is 37 times 42?’, and many wrong ones. To say that there are right ways (plural) to move could connote several morally-acceptable meth- ods to get to a happiness peak, but this does not fit the usual concept of rightness. No doubt what Harris really means is that there are more and less workable methods for moving up the landscape to a peak of flourishing.

Book Reviews May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 43 Books

A more problematic passage is: “physi- The Value of The Moral Landscape of things. Moreover, lupine intelligence is cians have a moral obligation to handle At least half this book is worthwhile usually rated inferior to that of humans. medical statistics in ways that minimize reading indeed. A quarter, the rant on reli- Rowlands suggests that since we are simi- unconscious bias” (p.143). How does he gion, which takes up a whole chapter, is ans, we naturally cling to the belief that get from the observable fact that minimiz- mere recapitulation of points made else- our simian intelligence is superior to the ing bias has good effects, to saying the we where by Harris and others. Another quar- intelligence of other animals, like wolves. have a moral obligation to do so? Unless we ter, the chapter on belief and brain struc- But is it superior? Or is it just different? radically redefine what we mean by ‘obli- ture, is intriguing and germane, but lacking Attempting to answer these questions gation’, we are not morally obliged to min- in some important details. One hopes for a and more in this book, Rowlands first imize harm on Harris’s view. Instead, we whole book on the subject. acknowledges that he is a brutish ape him- are merely better advised to do so. Harris I do not want to be overly harsh. Harris is self, undoubtedly making it difficult to see wants to redefine the concept of ‘moral on to something very important here: that things from outside the perspective of an obligation’ in terms of probable benefits careful observation of what actually works ape. As such, he writes about many of the and harms, but he does not make the argu- has a great deal to tell us about what is good negatives that come with our social intelli- ment for doing so clearly enough. and valuable. Thus despite not demonstrat- gence, such as our evolved ability to It is certainly easy to confuse the ing the book’s central premise, Harris pro- deceive others: “When we talk about the notions of Right and Good because both vides a thought-provoking and highly read- superior intelligence of apes, we should are used to evaluate, recommend, com- able account of a topic of great relevance: bear in mind the terms of this comparison: mand or prohibit policies or courses of how we can survive and thrive in a world of apes are more intelligent than wolves action. Despite his best efforts, Harris here increasing confusion and complexity. because, ultimately, they are better falls into that confusion and strays from © DR BILL MEACHAM 2012 schemers and deceivers than wolves.” the paradigm in which his argument makes Bill Meacham received his PhD in Philosophy the most sense – the Goodness paradigm. from the University of Texas at Austin, made Even within the Goodness paradigm, he his living as a programmer, systems analyst and Mark and does not successfully make the move he project manager, and is now an independent Brenin wants to make – to the value of a concern, scholar in philosophy. His writing can be found not just for one’s own self, or for all at www.bmeacham.com/whatswhat. humans, but for conscious beings generally. It is clear that a thoughtful and intelli- • The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine gent concern for one’s own well-being Human Values by Sam Harris, Free Press, 2010. would lead one to take actions intended to 291pages, ISBN 978-4391-7121-91 increase that well-being, and careful obser- vation of what works and what doesn’t would tend to increase one’s skill in doing The Philosopher so. One of the things we observe is that we and the Wolf do not live in isolation: “Our own happi- by Mark Rowlands ness requires that we extend the circle of HUMANS OFTEN our self-interest to others – to family, wonder how other ani- friends, and even to perfect strangers mals think or feel. I whose pleasures and pains matter to us” often wonder: do non- (p.57). But what about perfect strangers human animals wonder how humans feel? whose pleasures and pains do not matter to For Mark Rowlands, a philosophy profes- us? And what about dolphins, whales, sor and author of The Philosopher and the chimps, elephants, dogs and cats, ants, ter- Wolf, the answer to this question is “No.” mites and microbes? (Again, where do we The Philosopher and the Wolf is a philo- A Story: Man Owns Wolf draw the line about which ones are con- sophical memoir about a man’s life and In the first part of the book we quickly scious?) It is not at all clear why, starting what he learned about it by living with a learn about how Rowlands acquired Brenin from a ‘moral’ desire to enhance one’s own wolf for over a decade. Ultimately, how- when he was living in Alabama as a twenty- well-being, we should move to a concern ever, the book is a philosophical reflection something philosophy professor. Readers for the well-being of conscious creatures on the human condition. As such, its main are likely to wonder whether wolf owner- generally. A crucial premise is missing. purpose, I think, is to examine how what we ship is an intelligent thing to allow in civi- The missing premise might be some- call ‘social intelligence’ affects how we lized society, and rightly so. Animal rights thing like an assertion of connectedness think about and engage with the world. activists are also likely to question the among all beings, such that an injury to Social intelligence is the characteristic ‘unnatural’ conditions in which Brenin was one is in some sense an injury to all. But which allows humans to empathize, and it forced to live, thanks to his human owner. Harris does not assert such a premise. is a large part of what makes humans dis- Philosopher that he is, Rowlands chal- Instead he universalizes the concern for tinctive. It also allows us to live in civilized lenges potential animal cruelty accusers by one’s own well-being, presumably because societies. Wolves are intelligent; but questioning what it means to have an of the Kantian belief that moral premises according to Rowlands, wolves have unnatural existence anyway. should be consistent and generalizable. But mechanical intelligence, not social intelli- Rowlands is understandably defensive he does not make that move explicit either. gence: they know how to do a wide range about his actions, and he writes emphati-

44 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 Book Reviews Books

Allegory of Time Reflections of the happiness is, accordingly, regressive and Governed by Philosopher as a futile,” writes Rowlands. Prudence Young Wolf For the wolf, however, Rowlands claims Titian, 1565 A significant part of this that there is no sense of time or progress, book is about the philo- so there is no end-point that a wolf is sophical and personal working towards. Thus, unlike many lessons Rowlands learned humans, a wolf finds happiness in its expe- from Brenin. Rowlands rience of moments – even in the repetition also borrows from the of them. Humans, by contrast, easily philosophies of Sartre, become bored and seek novelty. Heidegger and Nietzsche, As a professional philosopher, Rowlands and philosophical makes it a point to also tell readers that vignettes are intertwined nothing is more inhuman than philosophy, throughout the book. aside from pure mathematics or theoretical Rowlands makes no physics (I think he forgot to add economics attempt to hide the failings to that list). Philosophy, after all, worships and unhappiness of his logic in all its coldness. According to Row- younger self. Although in lands, “to be a philosopher is to be existen- his twenties he appeared tially deracinated” [torn up by the roots]. to be a gregarious fellow, he informs readers that his Canine Conclusions socialization with other Parts of the book were touching and humans then was largely thought-provoking. There were also parts of lubricated by alcohol. He this book where I couldn’t stomach the cally about how his purchase of a wolf cub makes perfectly clear that at heart he was a rationalizations Rowlands offered. Nonethe- was entirely justified. His arguments in misanthropic loner. However, during the less, overall I found the book to be engaging support of his actions are compelling, drunken haze in which he spent his young and enjoyable. Rowlands, clever ape that he although not entirely convincing. I think adulthood, Rowlands was not acting is, ultimately reminded me that (as he Rowlands also unintentionally demon- authentically. He was not being true to writes), “Philosophers should be offered strates how a person’s ego can lead one to himself. condolences rather than encouragement.” believe, with righteous certainty, things he One of the most notable philosophically- © GREG LINSTER 2012 cannot possibly know. For example, he focused chapters in the book Greg Linster is a writer and a graduate stu- writes, “To suppose that Brenin could not is called ‘Time’s Arrow’. In dent studying the branch of applied philosophy be happy simply because he was not doing it Rowlands offers a pow- called ‘Economics’ at the University of Denver. what natural wolves do is little more than a erful argument as to why He blogs at www.coffeetheory.com banal form of human arrogance, and belit- humans struggle to tles his intelligence and flexibility.” I sus- find happiness. For • The Philosopher & The Wolf: Lessons from the pect that some people may be turned off by starters, he thinks our Wild on Love, Death & Happiness by Mark Rowlands’ own apparent arrogance (at notions of happiness Rowlands, Granta, 2008, least I was, initially). For instance: “I think smack of dire 256 pages, £8.99 pb, the Koehler method that I used to train misunder- ISBN 978-1847080592. Brenin was ultimately so successful because standing. To it resonates with a certain understanding of Rowlands, Lupus Homini Homo, the existential nature of dogs and their wild enjoying spe- or, one man’s brothers.” cific moments is best friend As the book progresses we learn more the one thing that about the escapades Rowlands and Brenin can make us happy. shared. Brenin sat quietly through many of Yet humans naturally Rowland’s philosophy classes, attended his tend to think of life in rugby matches around the southern United terms of a linear progres- States, and followed his testosterone-filled, sion towards some desirable beer-loving owner to plenty of social gath- goal. This is in order to erings (Brenin, cute wolf that he was, was a help us make sense of our ‘chick magnet’, according to Rowlands). lives in narrative terms. Brenin also followed his owner overseas, However, on this way of spending six months in quarantine before thinking, the moments are being allowed to enter Ireland. Rowlands always slipping away. Our and Brenin then did a short stint together way of understanding time, in London before moving to the south of then, is a curse which distracts France, where Brenin would eventually us from experiencing happi- take his last breath. ness: “The human search for

Book Reviews May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 45 ALICE IN ONDERLAND HeatherW Rivera takes a look through Tim Burton’s Films movie version from a feminist perspective 2010 ORPORATION C ISNEY © D FILM IMAGES

ONDERLAND

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LICE IN

A

must say to start off with that Tim Alice. In supporting her ideas, Alice’s father fit in with pre-established roles and give up Burton’s recreation of Lewis Carroll’s is not the typical patriarch we would expect her uniqueness (or as Alice would call it, Iclassic tale surprised me no end! With for this time. Oddly, her mother (Lindsay her ‘muchness’). a few twists away from the original tale and Duncan) fills that roll. Thus Alice takes a journey into the lovely graphics, Burton has created a mas- Alice is soon in a coach with her mother unknown. This journey consists of two terpiece for women everywhere. Allow me – an overpowering, overwhelming type of a intertwined aspects: discovering who she then to take you through a journey down woman. She is much more dominant then is, and becoming courageous. In fact, who the rabbit hole: together we can explore her father, and has a set of rules Alice must she is means who she has always been; but just how far my feminist interpretation can follow: what she can wear, how she will this has been lost or forgotten through her go. We may feel a few bumps on the way dance, with whom she will associate. Very growing up in a social setting where chil- down, but we will emerge stronger and staunch woman indeed. Alice wants no part dren are told how they must think, behave enlightened at the end of this journey. of this life, and she even ‘forgets’ to wear and feel. In traditional education, both in her corset – a real sticking point for her the family setting and in school, develop- Feminist in Wonderland mother, as this is improper for a young lady ment coincides with being shaped into a At the beginning we meet Alice (Mia of that period. predetermined mold, with little care about Wasikowska) and her father (Marton Alice is on her way to meet Hamish. Lit- what the child is within herself. We see Csokas). Alice’s father-figure represents the tle does she know that Hamish will propose this early on in the story when Alice’s world of ideas and dreams for the girl. to her in front of all her friends and family. mother is instructing her what to do and Having a very creative mind himself, When he does, Alice rejects him and runs how to do it. Alice is not thrilled with this Alice’s father supports his daughter’s off. This is strong move for a young lady predetermined path, and decides to break “strange dreams”. “Mad people are always during this period. To escape from the free of it and go her own way. the best,” he adds, and this may be true, for harshness of her own reality, Alice follows a Alice is not ready for her discoveries at new ideas are often seen as madness, but white rabbit, or possibly her own imagina- first. In fact most of the characters she without them, we’d still be in caves. How- tion, down a rabbit hole. Thus her adven- meets along the way note that she is not ever, anyone who differs from her cultural ture in Wonderland begins. It is time for Alice, or “hardly Alice” as the caterpillar environment knows how hard it is to trust Alice to face her inner world, which claims Absalom puts it – meaning that when she and stick to her own different mindset – to its own logic. Without such independent first lands in Underland, Alice has not stick to her guns, so to speak – and so does thinking, the only choice a woman has is to evolved into the woman she needs to

46 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 become. (We learn that although Alice Carter) has taken over Wonderland. The calls this place ‘Wonderland’, its true Red Queen represents authoritarian/patri- name is ‘Underland’.) Is this the real Alice, archal society, in which tyrannical laws are or is she just an impostor? That’s the main established, ie, Alice’s mother. She is a motif of the film, and it’s a variant of an dominant figure short in stature, thus hav- age-old question: Is this the real me, or ing what I think of as a Napoleon complex. just an actor pretending to be what I show Everyone will dress and act a certain way, to others? Moreover, am I trustworthy? and no person will dare go against the Films Am I going to make it? Am I strong mighty Red Queen. If you cross her it’s off enough to deal with and overcome the with your head. The Red Queen’s entire when she perceives it as harmful. How- monsters that may come my way? How do entourage is frightened of her; they do ever, a woman has to go beyond that: she I even know what is real? whatever she demands. On the other hand, needs to knows why she doesn’t like a situ- the White Queen is simply a witch who ation, in order to make the proper deci- The Heroine Quest defies the historical patriarchal idea of sion. That’s discernment at work: it distin- The story unfolds between fear and witches being evil and wearing black. We guishes and separates. It turns strong but compassion. More and more, Alice realizes could say that she’s the Feminine not sub- unclear feelings into crystal clear ideas and that her safety depends on the safety of her dued by or to patriarchal logic. As the a vivid vision about life. In doing this, Alice loved ones, first of all the Mad Hatter Feminine she is set apart: she’s not will finally find her true identity and a phi- (played by Burton protegé Johnny Depp), destroyed, but she lives in a separate world. losophy to live by. So with the sword Alice the manifestation of the wonderfully mad Here in her world Alice finds her the right fights the monster. The monster repre- ideas she has been hatching all her life. size – not too reduced, not too oversized, sents everything Alice hates: boundaries, The Mad Hatter is her alter-ego, or per- but rather just right, and supportive. the rules holding her back, and the haps the person she is deep down, who Alice must destroy the power of the Red destruction of creativity. “Off with your could exist so colorfully and unpredictably Queen and help the White Queen back to head!” Alice shouts at the final stroke, slic- in this sub-world thanks to Alice’s father’s ruling Wonderland. To do this Alice must ing through the Jabberwocky’s neck. endorsement. Therefore Alice must save fight the Red Queen’s Jabberwocky, a The battle now won, Alice is finally the Hatter to save her own identity. mythical creature. Getting to the Queen is free. To do what? Alice is now free to say Now, here’s an interesting thing: a male not enough. It still remains to fight the ‘no’ to conventional roles, and free to hatter who is Alice’s inner being. Can a monster. This is the fight any woman who depart on her redirected life’s journey. So male hatter be a feminist? This one cer- wants to follow her soul must at some time Alice refuses to marry the man arranged tainly can! He truly believes in Alice, and undertake: an act of defiance and bravery to for her. She will instead set out on a new will do anything to help her along her battle for what she believes in. adventure and start her own business. Cre- journey. He not only needs her to succeed, Alice needs a special sword to slay the ative, unique, sweet, brave and indepen- he also wants her to succeed. Jabberwocky, which is bestowed upon her dent, the metamorphosis of Alice is now As the Mad Hatter talks to Alice, we by the White Queen. Swords are a symbol complete. learn that he is a servant of the White of discernment, a precious thing. Without © HEATHER RIVERA 2012 Queen (Anne Hathaway) and that the Red it, courage is vain and completely blind. A Heather Rivera is a graduate student at Stony Queen (Burton’s wife, Helena Bonham girl might instinctively reject a situation Brook University in New York.

May/June 20012 G Philosophy Now 47 A Hasty Report From allis A Tearing Hurry T in Raymond Tallis has a measured response Wonderland to numbered seconds. Yeats said: it extended our powers beyond watches us; and the portability of the “And strangers were as brothers to his clocks” anything that could be imagined by our watch compared with, say, the obelisk, W.H. Auden pre-numerate ancestors. locks together the watching and the watched more intimately. Inside these ever eaders of this column will know Deep Time Thoughts more tightly drawn temporal meshes, the that I am committed to snatching Timing has not only enabled us to see clock rules our every moment. The living Rtime from the jaws of physics; in more of how the material world works so rhythms spelt out in our breathing, our particular to rescuing it from a reduction that we can work on it, or with it, more walking and our beating hearts, are over- to a quasi-spatial dimension and its further effectively; it has also greatly extended our ridden by something totally different, sym- reduction to numbers. Thus reduced, time temporal gaze. In recent centuries, we have bolised by the way the watch we consult becomes a mere variable – t – that has no come to situate ourselves in ‘deep time’: with fast-beating heart clasps our wrist, qualities, only numerical values, and none the time revealed by archaeologists, evolu- seeming to strangle our pulse. We dance of the features that make it central to tionary biologists, geologists and astro- to a rhythm of the shared day, of the com- human life. For example, little t, unlike physicists. Thus we locate ourselves in a mon world, of the universe, that’s imposed time as we experience it, has no tenses. span of time that exceeds the duration of and embraced: it is ours and not ours. The difference between (say) a regretted our lives by billions of years, and the dura- This is not all bad, of course. Our lives past and an anticipated future is lost in t. tion of the species to which we belong by are vastly enriched by keeping track of the I could go on about the poverty of t, but not much less. The measurement that has time, and we are collectively and individu- I won’t, because I am also aware that in made us collectively mighty has created a ally empowered by co-ordination: dancing demoting t I might overlook something mirror in which we see ourselves as indi- to the music of clock time, we can work rather extraordinary: the mysterious verb vidually, existentially small – a tendency I together more effectively to meet and ‘to time’. While all beings (pebbles, trees, criticised in my previous column (‘You anticipate our basic needs, to generate ever monkeys etc) are in some sense ‘in’ time – Chemical Scum, You’). more complex ways of exploiting nature, immersed or perhaps dissolved in it – we Yet the sense, implicit in the verb ‘to and to erect defences against a universe humans are alone in timing what happens – time’, of accessing time directly, is confus- that has no particular care for us. And we including (or especially) timing what hap- ing, and leads to the deeply questionable must not underestimate what an extraordi- pens to our very lives. We portion time into notion that clocks measure ‘the passage of nary achievement this is. To take a salient days, and number days, and parts of days, time’ – something to which we shall return example: the operating theatre. There is and know that our days are numbered. One on another occasion. Instead, let us glance the surface orchestration of the lives of all striking illustration of this is that of all the now at another aspect of timing – also easily the experts (surgeons, nurses, technicians, occupants of the Solar System – rocks, overlooked – which becomes more apparent anaesthetists, cleaners, and engineers) nec- trees, lemurs, etc – we alone use the rela- as timepieces become more sophisticated. It essary to make the procedure happen tive movements of the Solar System’s com- is that we note ‘the time’ at a time. So I note safely. But beneath the task of getting them ponents to organise our own commitments. that it is 4:30 at 4:30: “I looked at the clock all to the operating theatre at the right What a delicious piece of cheek to appro- at 4:30 and saw that it was 4:30.” This time, there is an almost bottomless infras- priate the rotation of the Earth round the underlines the extent to which, as timers, we tructure of temporally co-ordinated life. Sun to instruct us when to do what – for both stand outside of time and are immersed Think of the engineer responsible for example, when to have our Christmas din- in it. To know that it is 4:30 is to be at 4:30, making sure the complex machinery in the ner. To vary a saying of Douglas Adams: and also to be looking on 4:30 as if from a theatre works, at the right time. He has to “Time is mysterious; tea-time doubly so.” temporal outside. So in subjecting time to arrive on time, and his journey will have So we should not allow objections to timing, we seem to have succeeded in step- involved a multitude of conductors of his the reduction of time to little t to allow us ping to one side of time in some respect, private orchestra of activities – ranging to overlook the mysterious activity of ‘tim- while of course, remaining in it. from the alarm clock he set to wake him ing’, or the extraordinary truth that despite So, while we are pulling time out of the up, to the traffic lights whose efficient, cen- the gap between lived and measured time, jaws of physics, we must not forget what an trally-regulated working made sure that he measuring it has enabled us (via science amazing, and deeply puzzling, activity ‘tim- was not held up forever in jammed traffic. and technology) to extend, protect, enrich ing’ is. And its consequences are immeasur- His assumption of his present post as hos- and enhance our existence – indeed, to able. It transforms social life into a multi- pital engineer will also be the end stage of a have the time of our lives. “Measurement tude of intermeshing ensembles harmonised long journey that has depended on meeting began our might” as the poet William by timepieces. We watch time and time with others at pre-set times. His skills, for

48 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 example, will have involved a multitude of drives a positive feedback cycle in which people whose tabled time, set out in a cur- we demand more of the world and the riculum, will have meshed with his, so that world demands more of us. This quicken- he was able to benefit from their expertise. ing of pace is evident in every aspect of our The equipment on which he learned his lives. We supplement the treadmill of skills, either directly or as illustrations of work with a treadmill of pleasure – hurry principles, had to be manufactured, tested, seems to be a constant condition, even if allis delivered, maintained and demonstrated by the hurry is to catch a plane to go on holi- an endless army of individuals turning up day, to arrive at a concert on time, or to T in on time and timing their activities to fit in honour an engagement whose sole purpose with the activities of others (including the is for a casual get-together. We are forever Wonderland activity of timing the performance of the on the edge of being late, and any derelic- machinery). The equipment will itself have tion in this respect causes us anguish: we municate’ more electronically, we seem to a multitude of components based on are mortified, and the others are impatient. communicate less. This paradox symptoma- clocks, visible and hidden, created by other So as we seem to get a grip on time via tizes what is happening more generally: clock-watchers on physical principles whose numbers, time gets an ever-tighter grip on that, as we travel faster and our journeys are discovery and application and commerciali- us. We are like Gulliver in Lilliput, pinned increasingly effortless, so we seem to travel sation involved yet more armies of clock- to the ground by a multitude of chrono- lighter, indeed to become lighter. We are drilled people. At every point in his life, logical threads, notwithstanding that our attenuated – or, as I have described it, ‘e- our theatre engineer will have been borne hastes become more manic and our pas- ttenuated’. The inability fully to experience up by myriads of clock-conducted fellows. sage from one thing to the next is an our experiences, except when those experi- increasingly fluid slide. ences are unpleasant (hunger, cold, pain, Time for Tyranny terror, grief) becomes ever more evident. This is a beneficent example. There are other less heart-warming instances of the consequences of temporal orchestration. The gigantic torture chamber that is North Korea is an extreme instance of how the imposed brotherhood of clocks can subordinate individual life entirely to a collective existence where each is reduced to an atom in a pattern of power servicing the needs of a small elite. And the scale of the catastrophic wars of recent centuries would not have been possible without clocks to bring men and materiel together on a giant scale, permitting destruction to be both precise and ubiquitous. The syn- chronies which enhance our ability to realise our collective power and knowledge A Dance To The Music Of Clock Time – and which enhance that collective power with our ever-increasing collective knowl- Future Continuous We have to look to boredom to restore to edge, unifying greater numbers of us with The tyranny of the clock extends to our time its weight, so that time hangs heavily. ever closer and denser connections – make future. The calendar on the wall prescribes So while we are rescuing time from the it possible to hurt each other with appallingly what is going to (or ought to) happen. Our jaws of physics, we might spare a little time enhanced efficiency. As time gets further days are mortgaged weeks, months and to think how we might rescue ourselves from subjective experience, goes further years ahead. A phone call on the morning from the machinery of clocks – while still, from our beating hearts, heartlessness may of November 12th 2010 commits the of course, honouring our responsibilities in install itself in the heart of our world. afternoon of July 14th 2012. The future an increasingly closely clocked human There are also lesser woes that may fol- we may not even live to see is populated world, and being duly respectful of what we low from keeping time. The kitchen clock, with constraining possibilities, with shared ‘timers’ have achieved. Thinking about the my watch, the pips from the radio peeping intentions that are mutual obligations. mystery of time; of timing; and yes, of the the hour, preside over my hurry, your The newer forms of communication not body of knowledge that is physics, all seem- hurry, the hurry of widening rings of only permit an instantaneity of response, ingly transilluminating the material world, friends and strangers who soften and they seem to demand it. Others expect may be a place to start. But I can’t start domesticate the infinite hard clockwork of immediate or continuous availability, and now because – My God, is that the time!!!! – the universe. Thus our orchestrated lives we expect this of others. We are electroni- I’ve got to email this article to the editor. may be being emptied even as they are cally skewered by emails, texts, cellphone © PROF. RAYMOND TALLIS 2012 being enriched. The ever-greater effi- calls. Our lives are co-ordinated, shaped, Raymond Tallis is a physician, philosopher, ciency of an ever-more-intimately-clocked even filled, by the heavens – not by the poet, broadcaster and novelist. His latest book In world adds to our opportunities, but it also stars, but by orbiting satellites. As we ‘com- Defence of Wonder is just out from Acumen.

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May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 51 r r e e h h 2010 t t E H o o

UIBING & &

ETHICAL EPISODES © H ARKS M OEL ‘A’ is for ‘Assumption’ J ORTRAIT OF Joel Marks on why the world needs philosophy. P

ocrates famously averred that the unexamined life is not by y will inevitably deteriorate into abuse. Well, clearly, under Sworth living. This was part of his ‘apology’ when, on trial present circumstances all other animals are virtually powerless for his life, he tried to explain what it means to be a philoso- relative to human beings; therefore just about any use we pher. I myself have taken this definition to heart: that philoso- make of them leads inexorably to their abuse. And is this not phy is the examination of fundamental assumptions. I have precisely the situation we observe? been examining with a vengeance of late – not intending to do This is why among animal advocates there has arisen in so as a philosophical exercise, mind you, but quite sponta- opposition to welfarism the movement known as (‘a’ is for) neously. So perhaps it will help you to understand what I have abolitionism, which seeks to abolish all institutions of animal been about in these columns if I review my recent philosophical use. Thus, there would be no animal agriculture, no hunting hobbyhorses in this light. As it happens, like ‘assumption’ (and, (other than for real need), no animal circuses, no zoos, no pets. for that matter, ‘apology’), all of them begin with ‘a’: animals The breeding of domestic animals would end, and the preser- (Issues 62, 66, 67, 72, and 85), asteroids (Issues 79 and 86), and vation of wild habitats be maximized. Abolitionists further amorality (Issues 80, 81, 82, 84, and 87). I’ll now explain the maintain that the emphasis on animal welfare actually serves common thread that links my discourses on the lot. to encourage animal use, since if people believe that the Animals. Human beings treat other animals abominably. (‘A’ animals they use are being well taken care of, they will lose is for ‘abominably’!) There are some exceptions, such as, in their main incentive for discontinuing that use; and hence, by some cultures, pets; but even pets represent an offense against the argument above, animal welfarism further entrenches free-living animals in their natural habitats, who have been animal abuse, and so is counterproductive even to welfare in deliberately bred into dependency and as a result dumbed- the long run. Here again the evidence seems to be in plain down as well. Almost all pets are denied the freedom to roam, sight: For all the growth of animal welfare organizations – and whether by foot, feather, or fin; instead they are confined to a just about every major animal protection organization is a building or the end of a leash, or kept on display in a cage or a welfare, as opposed to an abolition, organization – the abuse of bowl. The condition of the vast majority of nonhuman animals, animals has only increased and shows no sign even of deceler- however, is without even the compensations that may attach to ating. For reasons such as these I have allied myself with aboli- being a pet. Animals in the wild are trapped for their skins or tionists like Lee Hall and Gary Francione. hunted down for pure sport. Animals in captivity (other than Asteroids. Here I have cheated a little bit because (‘c’ is for) pets) are turned into egg or milk machines, or fattened for comets are also a major concern, not only asteroids. But due to direct human consumption, or consigned to laboratories for their overwhelming numbers in our vicinity at present, aster- testing and vivisection. All in all, it is not good to be a nonhu- oids have taken the lead in the public imagination as a threat man animal in a world controlled by human animals. to humanity. The more one learns about their potential to do However, many human beings are sensitive to one or us grave harm should we ever again collide with one the size of another aspect of our ‘inhumanity’ to other animals and there- Manhattan or larger, the more one finds oneself tossing and fore strive to better their lot. Thus have arisen numerous soci- turning in bed at night. These rocks number in the thousands eties for the prevention of cruelty to other animals and, more up to the trillions, depending on size and distance considered; generally, for the promotion of their welfare. One would think, and the inevitability of another big one eventually striking our then, that all animal advocates would be ‘welfarists.’ But this is planet – unless we prevent it – is denied by no one. Indeed, no not the case. Why not? Because welfarism is based on an one denies that an object the size of the one that wiped out the assumption which, if examined, proves untenable … or at least dinosaurs, and that would wipe out human civilization, will questionable. The assumption is that it is all right to use other one day bear down upon us. Furthermore, it is now a common animals so long as we do so with an eye to their welfare. Or to occurrence to discover asteroids that are large enough to put it epigrammatically: It is okay to use animals so long as we wreak havoc if they hit us and that do in fact make a close do not abuse them. approach to our planet, such as 2005 YU55, which came closer But this assumption may be unwarranted. The reason is that than the Moon last November 8 (2011), and 99942 Apophis, use and abuse, while indeed distinct concepts, may only differ which will come even closer on April 13, 2029. in reality under certain conditions, and those conditions may Thus have arisen Spaceguard and other programs, whose not obtain for other animals. One argument goes like this: So mission is to detect such hazards and devise and implement long as x is at an extreme power disadvantage to y, any use of x mitigating strategies. It is not easy, however, to deflect an

52 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012 Meteor Crater, Arizona incoming object of human-extinction size, which would be 1.2km in diameter 10km in diameter or larger. Fortunately, as one regularly hears 50,000 years old from the scientists who inform the public on this matter, objects of that size likely to come into Earth’s immediate vicin- ity are exceedingly rare. In fact there is a power law of size rel- ative to quantity, such that the larger the object, the fewer there are. Therefore, given limited resources, the present de facto policy is to focus on detecting medium-sized NEOs (Near-Earth Objects) – ones that could, say, wipe out a city – now ripe to expose morality for what it is – an illusion – and and designing and testing means of deflecting them. thence to eliminate it from our lives. The argument is an Alas, this seemingly sensible and rational policy is based on empirical one: in a nutshell, that a world without the felt-abso- an assumption that will not withstand critical scrutiny. The lutism and felt-certainty of moral convictions would be less assumption is that the relatively small number of the relatively violent, less hypocritical, less egotistical, less fanatical and so large objects makes it unlikely that we will be hit by one any forth than our present, moralistic world is, and therefore we time soon. But this is fallacious. The reason is that these events would prefer it. Garner makes the case at length in his Beyond occur at totally random intervals. Therefore an extinction- Morality (now online in a revised version), and I in my Ethics sized object could appear on the horizon at any time. The sta- without Morals (forthcoming from Routledge). (Note: My per- tistics only tell us that this will occur sooner or later, but they sonal story of ‘counter-conversion’ to amorality is told in Bad do not tell us when. One takes false comfort in their relative Faith: A Philosophical Memoir, which I shall perhaps one day rarity in the recent historical record. post on the Internet.) Indeed, this way leads to absurdity. For suppose there were And observe that this claim is analogous to the two other insufficient reason to begin to prepare to prevent (‘a’ is for) claims discussed above. For just as animal protection based on Armageddon by asteroid or comet this year because of the the fallacious policy of welfarism acts to the detriment of exceedingly low statistical probability of such an occurrence. animal protection, and planetary defense based on the falla- Therefore there would never be a time when there is sufficient cious policy of mid-sized impact mitigation acts to the detri- reason to prepare for it, since the statistical probability remains ment of planetary defense, so, moral abolitionists (not to be constant (at least until Armageddon occurs ... but possibly even confused with animal-use abolitionists, although I happen to then!). But Armageddon will occur unless we prevent it. be both) argue, an ethics based on morality is both fallacious Therefore it is rational to allow Armageddon to occur. But it is and self-defeating. The fallacy of morality is that the strength not rational to allow Armageddon to occur. Therefore it is of our moral convictions (or ‘intuitions’) warrants our belief in false that there is insufficient reason to begin to prepare to their truth. The self-defeatingness of morality is that a moral- prevent Armageddon by asteroid or comet this year just ist world is (today if not heretofore) more likely to be discor- because of its exceedingly low statistical probability. dant with our considered desires than an amoralist world. Thus, just as animal protection based on the fallacious Assumptions. So this is my catalogue of dangerous assump- policy of welfarism serves to the detriment of animal protec- tions that license (1) the ever-increasing exploitation and tion, so planetary defense based on the fallacious policy of slaughter of nonhuman animals by the tens and hundreds of mid-sized impact mitigation serves to the detriment of plane- billions, (2) the exposure of humanity to extinction by aster- tary defense. oidal or cometary impact (maybe not a bad deal for some of Amorality. It was only after I had finished writing the culmi- the animals, though), and (3) the excessively judgmental and nating monograph of my career as a so-called normative ethi- even lethal imposition of our preferences on one another. My cist that I realized that both the monograph and my career had aim has been to illustrate the utility of philosophy as the criti- been based on an assumption that could be seriously ques- cal examiner of our most fundamental and pervasive – and tioned, namely, that morality exists. The case against morality hence, most likely to be mischievous – assumptions. By a is known in the specialist literature as the argument to the best curious but inevitable logic, the foundations of our beliefs are explanation. Simply stated it is the claim that all moral phe- the shakiest part of the whole edifice of our knowledge, pre- nomena, including our occasional tendency to altruism and cisely because they are the most taken for granted – positively our beliefs in moral obligation, moral guilt, moral desert, and buried in the underground of our psyche. Philosophy brings the like, can plausibly be accounted for by our evolutionary them into the light of day for inspection and possible repair or, and cultural history, without the need to postulate any actual if they prove too rotted out, condemnation of the whole struc- moral obligation, moral guilt, moral desert, and the like. So ture that has rested upon them. morality turns out to be like religion, or theism in particular, in I must admit, (‘a’ is for) alas, that my own philosophical that the more plausible explanation of our belief in God, etc., efforts to date have little to show by way of liberating animals, is that such a belief has served to help us survive rather than saving humanity, or making society less violent and antagonis- that there actually is a God. tic. But perhaps I can at least be given an ‘A’ for effort. Now this may seem to lead to the conclusion that we are © PROF. JOEL MARKS 2012 therefore in the peculiar position of needing to cling to a delu- Joel Marks is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of sion. However, some few of us (including most explicitly at New Haven and a Bioethics Center Scholar at Yale University. Don’t present Richard Garner and myself) maintain that the time is assume that you may prudently ignore his website TheEasyVegan.com.

May/June 2012 G Philosophy Now 53 P.K.F. Robinson 1908-2012 Michael O’Connor reports on the Diagonalist English philosopher sadly crushed to death by his ‘Philosophical House’. he distinguished English philoso- derstood ‘The Metaphysical Sexuality of the pher P.K.F. Robinson died on Centipede’. TApril 1st at the age of 103, when By 1969, new thinking about the meaning of his ‘Diagonalist’ philosophical house col- ‘But’ led him to publish his nine-volume lapsed, crushing him to death. Robinson magnum opus, Notes towards a Prolegomena for burst onto the philosophical scene at the an Introduction to a Preliminary Enquiry into age of twenty-one with his book A Concept the Grounds of the Possibility of Defining ‘But’. in My Mind (1929). A year earlier he had This work was the inspiration for the Bulgar- been cycling into the quad of his Oxford ian ‘Preliminarist’ movement of the 1970s, college at speed. A malfunction of the bi- whose mass suicide in 1987 unnerved many. cycle’s chain propelled him forwards like a In the late 1970s Robinson immersed himself rocket, and he hit the college wall face first and fell into a coma. in continental philosophy, especially Heidegger. Robinson’s This had profound consequences for philosophy. As Robinson startling work in existentialist ontology, Man Is Always Facing tells us in his Autobiography (1986): “On the seventh day of the Forward (1984), argued that: coma I awoke with a new philosophical insight grounded in ra- “Dasein [Man] is always facing forwards. He exists in the ontological modes tional intuition and known with the epistemic certainty of the of Being Awake (Being as Openness) or Being Asleep (Being as non-Being, as self-evident: I was a concept in my own mind. I knew this indu- Closedness). Man the Awake is sometimes Being-on-his-feet in the existen- bitably, and it formed the metaphysical foundation of the sys- tial mode of standing up, sometimes Being-in-a-chair (sitting down, either as tem of thought I expounded in A Concept in My Mind.” (p.837) Being Awake or Being Asleep), and sometimes existing in the mode of hori- Robinson was a concept in his own mind! This fundamental zontality (lying down, either as Being Asleep or Having-a-rest). In the ekstasis insight laid the foundations for a new era in British and then of wine or spirit inebriation there is a turn (‘Kehre’) from ontological vertical- Western philosophy. It blew existing conceptual frameworks ity to horizontality, from standing up to Being-on-the-ground, and Man’s apart, exposing the history of Western philosophy as a series of fallenness (‘Pisht’) is revealed. But if there is no Earth, Man falls through errors based on a conceptual mistake. At this time Robinson nothingness and is groundless, neither standing, sitting, nor lying down. was regarded by many as the greatest thinker of his generation, Nonetheless, he is still facing forward, but without esse, percipi, Being-in-the- and it seemed that at last philosophy had made real progress. world, transcendental rationality, or a cup of tea.” (p.2562.) Six years later, during a darts match with the Logical Posi- tivist A.J. Ayer, a remark of Ayer’s caused Robinson to lie down Reading Heidegger led Robinson to study Dilthey’s theory for three weeks. “I remained in the mode of horizontality, ab- that historical events are unrepeatable. Robinson attempted to juring consciousness, thought and language, and especially integrate this view with existentialist principles in his book Vuja apostrophes,” he later wrote. When he woke, he immediately De: The Feeling That This Has Never Happened Before (1988). started writing three articles in analytical philosophy: ‘The In his later years, in an effort to overcome the vertical/hori- meaning of And’, ‘The logic of But’, and ‘The definition of If’. zontal dichotomy, Robinson spent months living diagonally, He never spoke of his ‘concept in my mind’ theory again. leaning against buildings on street corners so as to experience Seminal books on ‘But’, ‘If’ and ‘And’ followed during the ‘Being’ more authentically. His arrest for vagrancy led him to 1930s, alongside his positivistic The Obliquity of Metaphysics. originate the philosophical school of ‘Architectural Dasein’. He A noise made by Wittgenstein in 1949 over cheese led built a ‘Diagonalist’ house near Lewes with walls at 45 degree Robinson to spend the rest of the year horizontal in bed, re- angles, and published The Metaphysics of Obliquity. In his garden flecting. On January 1st 1950, he leapt from his bed, and by the he created a Platonic Cave with a fire inside, and watched the end of the year he had published his book No More Ifs, Ands, or play of appearances and shadows on the wall. He would often Buts: The Impossibility of Defining These Terms or Any Others I suddenly turn and hop out of the cave in a frantic search for Have Heard Of. During this time, Balliol College residents often Platonic Forms, occasionally shouting “Gotcha!” had their sleep disturbed in the middle of the night by the Since his death, colleagues have been celebrating P.K.F sound of Robinson screaming “The word ‘And’ is just too hard Robinson’s life and his contribution to philosophy. Professor to understand. I can’t bear it! Leave me alone!” Peregrine Proclivity of Maudlin College, Oxford, said, “An In 1953, while cycling backwards to Balliol in a fume at J.L. avid but incompetent geometer as a youth, he was as delightful Austin (whose work influenced his newly-published book How on one leg as on two. His academic career spanned the twenti- To Do Nasty Things To People With Words), a collision with an eth century and embodied most of its philosophical currents. Oxford omnibus led to the loss of Robinson’s left leg. This in- At his peak he was the fastest philosopher in Oxford, except spired him to spend ten weeks in a vertical position, occasion- when Bernard Williams was visiting.” ally hopping. Little was heard from him until 1960, which saw the publication of groundbreaking articles in the new field of © MICHAEL O’CONNOR 2012 Applied Philosophy: ‘Ethics For Unipeds’, ‘The Phenomenol- Michael O’Connor is an Academic Skills Advisor at the University of ogy of Quadrupeds’, and the controversial and much misun- Toronto and a former Open University tutor in Philosophy.

54 Philosophy Now G May/June 2012