Ethical Record The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol. 116 No. 11 £1.50 December 2011 HUMPHREY’S MECHANISM FOR THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

Nicholas Humphrey (see his article page 3) believes that over evolutionary time, animals’ brains undergo “a slow but remarkable change…. the whole sensory activity gets ‘privatised’ (see diagrams below): the command signals for sensory responses get short-circuited before they reach the body surface, so that instead of reaching all the way out to the site of stimulation they now reach only to points closer and closer in on the incoming sensory nerve, until eventually the whole process becomes closed off from the outside world in an internal loop within the brain.” [from ‘How to solve the mind-body problem’ (J.Consc. Studies, 7 (4):5-20)]. Ian Buxton, who reviews Humphrey’s book Soul Dust – the magic of consciousness on page 7, conceived a very similar idea independently at about the same time.

SOUL DUST: THE MAGIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS Nicholas Humphrey 3 A CRITIQUE OF SOUL DUST Ian Buxton 7 VIEWPOINTS T. Rubens, J. Rayner, D. Rooum, R. Eastburn-Hewitt, A. Adler, B.Smoker 10 HRL ADDITIONS Cathy Broad 13 KIERKEGAARD ON COURAGE – BEFORE AND AFTER GOD Clare Carlisle 14 THE BLACKHAM ARCHIVE Anita Miller 18 GLOBAL CAPITALISM—GOOD OR BAD? Tom Rubens 20 SOCIALISM AND SECULARISM: AN UNEASY COMRADESHIP Terry Liddle 21 AGM MOTIONS AND THEIR RESULTS 23 ETHICAL SOCIETY EVENTS 24 SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. Main phone for all options: 020 7405 1818 Fax (lettings): 020 7061 6746 www.ethicalsoc.org.uk At the General Committee meeting on 7 December 2011, the following Officers were elected: Chairman: Chris Purnell Vice-chairman: Jim Herrick Treasurer: Chris Bratcher Editor: Norman Bacrac Please email texts and viewpoints for the Editor to: [email protected] Staff Chief Executive Officer: Jim Walsh Tel: 020 7061 6745 [email protected] Administrator: Martha Lee Tel: 020 7061 6741 [email protected] Finance Officer: Linda Alia Tel: 020 7061 6740 [email protected] Librarian: Catherine Broad Tel: 020 7061 6747 [email protected] Programme Co-ordinator: Ben Partridge Tel: 020 7061 6744 [email protected] Lettings Officer: Carina Dvorak Tel: 020 7061 6750 [email protected] Caretakers: Eva Aubrechtova (i/c) Tel: 020 7061 6743 [email protected] together with: Angelo Edrozo, Alfredo Olivo, Rogerio Retuerna, Cagatay Ulker Maintenance: Zia Hameed Tel: 020 7061 6742 [email protected] New Members We welcome to the Society: Ray Cornwell, Westminster, London; Maren Freudenberg, Edgware, London; Margaret Scholey-Hill, Westminster, London; Aditya Verma, Kensington, London. THE AGM OF THE S.P. ETHICAL SOCIETY, 13 NOVEMBER 2011 General Committee. At the AGM of the Society, the following were elected to the GC for three years: Norman Bacrac, Simon Callaghan, Giles Enders, Alys Gwynne-Jones. Existing GC members are: Chris Bratcher, Andrew Copson, John Edwards, Jim Herrick, Marina Ingham, Edmund McArthur, Terry Mullins and Chris Purnell. Holding Trustees. At the AGM, the following new Holding Trustees were elected for nine years: Jay Ginn, Steven Norley, Stuart Ware, Fiona Weir. Terry Mullins was re- elected for a further year (being over 75). Existing Holding Trustees are: Norman Bacrac, Chris Bratcher, Giles Enders, Jim Herrick. AGM Motions: Motions and their results are printed on page 23 of this issue of the Record. Advisory Groups, Sub-Committee and Working Groups The following were elected at the GC meeting on 7 December 2011 for this year: Education and Arts Advisory Group. Andrew Copson (Chair), Norman Bacrac, John Edwards, Jim Herrick, Edmund McArthur, Donald Rooum. Finance and Audit Sub-Committee. Chris Bratcher (Chair), Andrew Copson, John Edwards, Marina Ingham, Terry Mullins. Governance Working Group. Andrew Copson (Chair), Norman Bacrac, John Edwards, Edward McArthur. Library Advisory Group. Jim Walsh (Chair), Norman Bacrac, Andrew Copson, Carl Harrison (Archivist), Jim Herrick. Music Advisory Group. Giles Enders (Chair), Simon Callaghan, Alys Gwynne-Jones, Terry Mullins. Premises Advisory Group. Jim Herrick (Chair), John Edwards, Giles Enders, Donald Langdown, Terry Mullins. Publications Advisory Group. Norman Bacrac (Editor, Chair), Chris Bratcher, Giles Enders, Jim Herrick, Chris Purnell. 2 Ethical Record, December 2011 SOUL DUST: THE MAGIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS Nicholas Humphrey Lecture to the Ethical Society, 9 October 2011

At a conference on science and spirituality in 2009, the philosopher of physics Michel Bitbol opened his lecture as follows: Yesterday evening, I wondered how exactly I would connect our topic of this morning [quantum mechanics and the observer] with the broader issue of spirituality that is at the center of this conference. . . . I am not convinced that one can formulate an exhaustive characterization of spirituality, but let me state at least one important aspect and source of it. This source is the continuous, never completely digested astonishment of being there, being in this unique situation: why do I live now, in this special period of history? Why am I me, born in this family, in this place of the world? I was taught that there were many other possibilities: being any person, at any time, or even just not being at all. And yet here I am, in front of you. Me, not you; here, not there; now, not then. . . . What is the reason, if any, of this inescapable singularity? Does the fact that we all live through this mystery, alleviate it in any way? There is a deep, old, and permanent sense of awe which is associated to such realization of our situation, and I am convinced that this experience is a crucial ground of spirituality as opposed to science. For, how could we take care of the sense of uniqueness and fate that pervades our lives from an undefined moment of our childhood until the unique moment of our own death, if we stick to the methodologically objective discipline of science? Entering the Soul Niche Bitbol does not use the term ‘soul’. But it will not have escaped your notice — and possibly even your censure — that I myself have used the word in my book Soul Dust. Should I really be using it so freely? Doesn’t the word ‘soul’ carry too much baggage? Yes, it does, and I should — I should because it does. At the end of his discussion of ‘mind-stuff’, early in the Principles of Psychology, William James wrote, “Many readers have certainly been saying to themselves for the last few pages: ‘Why on earth doesn’t the poor man say the Soul and have done with it?”’ He noted that there might be methodological problems with going down that road. Nonetheless, said he, “I confess . . . that to posit a soul influenced in some mysterious way by the brain-states and responding to them by conscious1 affections of its own, seems to me the line of least logical resistance.” And yet, three chapters later, James was having none of it. Admittedly, he wrote, “The theory of the Soul is the theory of popular philosophy.” Admittedly, it would seem to have practical uses — among other things it guarantees the “closed individuality of each personal consciousness” and underpins the idea of Ethical Record, December 2011 3 2 “forensic responsibility before God.” . “The consequences of the simplicity and substantiality of the Soul are its incorruptibility and natural immortality — nothing but God’s direct fiat can annihilate it — and its responsibility at all times for whatever it may have ever done.” But all this, James claimed, is metaphysics, not science. And “as psychologists, we need not be metaphysical at all.” In short, “altogether, the Soul is an outbirth of that sort of philosophizing whose great maxim, according to Dr. Hodgson*, is: ‘Whatever you are totally ignorant of, assert to be the explanation of everything else.” And “My final conclusion, then, about the substantial Soul is that it explains nothing and guarantees nothing. . . . I therefore feel entirely free to discard the word Soul from the rest of this book.” That James had taken 350 pages to get to this point — and had become so tetchy —suggests more than a little internal conflict. You can almost hear a rational soul-denying ego battling it out with an emotional soul-affirming id. The rationalist wins the argument (that is what rationalists always do). But it is remarkable what hard work it seems to have been — how stubbornly something inside him clung to the big idea. James was free to do what he liked. It was his book. But Soul Dust is mine. And I make no apology for not following James’s lead. Even if it is true that as scientific psychologists we need not be metaphysical — no more than a visiting Andromedan need be qua scientist — we need not and should not be blind to the role of metaphysical ideas in boosting the morale of ordinary human beings. As Bitbol said so eloquently, from childhood until the day you die, you find yourself living at the centre of a metaphysical mystery. You cannot but be fascinated by the facts of your own psychical existence. Like it or not, you see yourself, in James’s words, as a “simple spiritual substance in which the various psychic faculties, operations and affections inhere.” If that is not to have a soul, I do not know what is. Keith Ward on the Soul The theologian Keith Ward has written: “The whole point of talking of the soul is to remind ourselves constantly that we transcend all the conditions of our material existence; that we are always more than the sum of our chemicals, our electrons, our social roles or our genes. . . . We transcend them precisely in being indefinable, always more than can be 3seen or described, subjects of experience and action, unique and irreplaceable.” So, here is where I am driving. For members of the human species to live in a world where people in general have this opinion of themselves — and the opinion is in fact nearly universal — is to live in what we may call the ‘soul niche’. I mean ‘niche’, now, in the conventional ecological use of the term — an environment to which a species has become adapted and where it is designed to flourish. Trout live in rivers, gorillas in forests, bedbugs in beds. Humans live in soul land. *Shadworth Hodgson, an early epiphenomenalist{Ed.}

4 Ethical Record, December 2011 Soul land is a territory of the spirit. It is a place where the magical interiority of human minds makes itself felt on every side. A place where you naturally assume that every other human being lives, as you do, in the extended present of phenomenal consciousness. Where you acknowledge and honour the personhood of others, treating everyone as an independent, respectable, responsible, free-willed conscious being in his or her own right. Where you recognize and celebrate the awesome possibilities of individual, private joy and suffering. It is a place where the fate of your own consciousness and that of others is a constant talking point: where souls are the topic of gossip, of tender concern, of mean speculation; where souls are the subject of prayer and spells and ritual management. It is a place where the claims of the spirit begin to rank as highly as the claims of the flesh. Where you join hands with others in sharing — sharing, paradoxically, each in yourself — the beauties of the world you have enchanted. Soul land is the natural home of the artists, monks and popular philosophers (as James would call them) whom I quote so liberally throughout my book — a land fit for the heroes of consciousness to live in. I could go on in this vein, but I do not need to. You live there. You know. Anyone who studies the natural history of human beings must recognize that this spiritual territory is not only where almost all humans do live but where they give of their best. There can be no question that this is the niche to which the human species is biologically adapted, where individual men and women are able to make the most of their opportunities for leaving descendants. Yet this niche is in many ways a cultural product, by no means a given of the natural world. Human beings have largely invented the soul niche. The Formation of Nervous Loops We should not be surprised to find culture giving a leg up to nature in this case. Many other animal species besides humans play an active role in constructing the ecological niche to which they are4 biologically adapted, by modifying the local physical and social environment. Beavers change the geography by building dams, termites create a whole new eco-climate within their mounds, baboons construct a network of social relationships that helps shelter them from natural hazards and allows them to live in a range of otherwise inhospitable terrains. Humans, however, have taken ‘niche construction’ — especially social niche construction — to a quite new level. Ian Hacking, the philosopher, has drawn attention to how humans ‘make up people’: they create roles for individuals to adopt, roles that may never have existed before, which then become confirmed as ‘human kinds’, partly because5 other people encourage the role-players to live up to what is expected of them. In fact, almost all the categories humans use to structure the landscape of their society — such ordinary categories as, say, woman, priest, footballer, clown, Frenchman, beggarman, thief — have been partly created and subsequently reinforced by a looping process of this sort. More to the point, the Ethical Record, December 2011 5 same is true of extraordinary categories too. Even when a role is, strictly speaking, an impossible or a meaningless one, it can still be one to which individuals are encouraged to aspire and that they may end up simulating. Thus, for example, although it is presumably impossible to be a ‘witch’, many a poor woman in medieval Europe, coming under pressure from the community, embraced this impossibility and did indeed become a witch of sorts. But the most surprising and exotic example of a made-up human kind is the most ordinary of all: namely, the basic category of ‘human being’ as such. Anthropologists have provided rich accounts of how human cultures everywhere believe that human beings — at any rate the members of their human tribe — belong to a class of being elevated above the rest of nature. Even if no one can, in reality, live up to the job description of a supra-animal and even a supraphysical being that the culture advertises, people who believe in the possibility for themselves do become such beings of a sort. This is not the time to review such an extensive literature. Instead, to make the point generically, I’ll rely on a passage from the essayist Cabell, who explains how a human being, who begins with ‘very little save a faculty for receiving sensations’, becomes ‘a very gullible consciousness provisionally existing among inexplicable mysteries’. Cabell is an eccentric and pompous writer. But these words on the subject of how people have gone on to invent themselves, by living their dreams, are unexpectedly wise: And romance tricks [the human being], but not to his harm. For, be it remembered that man alone of animals plays the ape to his dreams. Romance it is undoubtedly who whispers to every man that life is not a blind and aimless business, not all a hopeless waste and confusion; and that his existence is a pageant (appreciatively observed by divine spectators), and that he is strong and excellent and wise: and to romance he listens, willing and thrice willing to be cheated by the honeyed fiction. The things of which romance assures him are very far from true: yet it is solely by believing himself a creature but little lower than the cherubim that man has by interminable small degrees become, upon the whole, distinctly superior to the chimpanzee: so that, however extravagant may seem these flattering whispers to-day, they were immeasurably

more remote from veracity when men first began to listen6 to their sugared susurrus, and steadily the discrepancy lessens. Cabell is surely right that human beings have talked themselves into having this grandiose picture of themselves. And the more they have talked themselves up, the taller they have truly grown. Yet, all the while, and for every new individual, it begins with the in-your-face mystery of being there. References 1 James, Principles of Psychology 1:180-81. 2 Ibid. The quotations in this and the following paragraph are from pp. 344-47. 3 Keith Ward, In Defence of the Soul (Oxford: Oneworld, 1998), p. 142. 4 F. J. Odling-Smee, K. N. Laland, and M. W. Feldman, Niche Construction: 6 Ethical Record, December 2011 The Neglected Process in Evolution, Monographs in Population Biology 37 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). 5 Ian Hacking, ‘The Looping Effect of Human Kinds’, in Causal Cognition: An Interdisciplinary Approach, ed. D. Sperber et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 351-83. 6 Cabell, Beyond Life, p. 356.

A CRITIQUE OF SOUL DUST Soul Dust by Nicholas Humphrey Princeton University Press, Princeton 2011 - ISBN 978-0-691-13862-6 Ian Buxton

What is consciousness? .. And what (if anything) is its raison d’être in Darwinian terms? These two questions are of course frequently asked both by philosophers of mind and by evolutionary biologists. Sadly – or perhaps excitingly, depending on your perspective – there is a wealth of competing explanatory schemata, and not even a glimmer of consensually validated science. The Discovery of Blindsight Into this wilderness strode Nick Humphrey (who has held various professorships including one at the LSE for many years). He first shot to academic acclaim as co-discoverer, along with his then-PhD supervisor and primate neuropsychologist Larry Weiskrantz, during the period extending roughly from 1969 until 1974 when they jointly discovered and explored the ramifications of the amazing phenomenon of blindsight. This turned out to be the precursor to an entire family of analogues within the other sensory modalities such as numbtouch and deafhearing. The situation in regard to each of these phenomena is that the sensing subject knows – or rather, ‘guesses’, but is unwilling to act with initiative on that basis – the identity and the visual, auditory or tactile properties of some object within the visual field (or within hearing distance or within her grasp) without having any sensory representation or ‘image’ of it. In short, she is not conscious of the route by whose means she gains the knowledge that that particular object is there. Nick and Weiskrantz began this work with macaque monkeys whose striate visual cortices had been radically excised, even if not entirely removed. Befriending one of his subjects, Helen, he noticed her approaching and picking at crumbs of food on the floor despite the extensive neurological damage. The syndrome was soon afterwards recognised also in similarly traumatised human subjects, as it became evident that they responded to questions about the identity of objects within their scotomata as guesses, but invariably only under strong prompting, and got it right almost 100% of the time, yet maintained that they simply could not see those objects. In 1991 Nick wrote the first of a series of books (A History of the Mind, highly recommended) attempting to elucidate the mechanism of consciousness from a completely novel perspective. Just to familiarise readers, he worked hard in that book to make clear the denotation of the term ‘consciousness’. Eschewing the prevailing (and, sadly, still prevalent) professional philosophers’ Ethical Record, December 2011 7 strategies either of a priori denial of the phenomenon (‘eliminativism’) as pursued by his good friend Daniel Dennett, or (and even worse!) simply discussing entirely alien subject-matter, he decided to plough an innovative furrow. ‘Alien’ to what, exactly? Well, alien to the clearly, etymologically recorded development of the word ‘consciousness’ within the English language. Nick set out (in A History .. ) a superb analysis of this semantic transformation from its origin as conscius around the time of Julius Caesar – meaning ‘knowledge held within a select group’ – to be contrasted with conscius sibi, meaning ‘to hold knowledge with oneself’ which one could, if one chose, disclose to others. In other words, keeping a secret known only to oneself, which sense developed into ‘having some issue on one’s conscience’. By the time of the Enlightenment, it had come to mean ‘knowledge shared only with oneself’, because obligatorily so. A little reflection – and it shouldn’t take too much, despite the professional obfuscations of philosophers – should tell the gentle reader that the only ‘mental’ phenomenon which is uniquely and incommunicably private is the character of the sensations themselves! (For how could one even in principle convey to some congenitally blind interlocutor (e.g.) the experience of witnessing crimson?) This utterly private and scientifically speaking still utterly baffling situation is, to Nick’s (and my own) way of thinking precisely the subject-matter to which the word ‘consciousness’ should rightfully be attached. As we’ve seen just above, such a preference is entirely in accord with the historical sense-development of the word. So in his latest book Soul Dust (released at the LSE last February) Nick continues to explore the theme begun in A History .. and subsequently defended against critics in The Mind Made Flesh: Essays from the Frontiers of Evolution and Psychology, and a little later in Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness. As always, his well-honed philosophical speculations, backed up by a wealth of neurological knowledge, are refreshingly illustrated by a rich panoply of literary quotations. Standing astride C.P. Snow’s infamous Two Cultures, he reveals himself to be a true Renaissance Man! The Function of Consciousness Taking a leaf from the cyberneticians’ textbooks, he hypothesises the function of consciousness to be that of furnishing an efference copy of the conscious organism’s own immediate-future motor intentions, a tack not too distantly removed from some of the current work of research engineer Daniel Wolpert. The term was originated by von Holst and Mittelstädt in 1950, and refers to the situation wherein the brain generates a motor prediction of the sensory feedback effects to be anticipated in consequence of some specific voluntary movement, thereby becoming able to estimate with arbitrary precision the nature of future adjustments to be made ‘on the fly’ in order to complete the action by monitoring deviations from the model prediction as they arise: Nick somewhat amusingly illustrates the book throughout with cartoons encapsulating his proposals, the allegedly human onlooker in each of which rather resembles some bipedal beetle. I suspect that he may have had a predilection for studying arthropods! The book has a generally more humanistic 8 Ethical Record, December 2011 feel to it than his slightly more technically oriented earlier writing, so arty types needn’t feel intimidated. The literary offerings alone should leave them longing for more. Around two thirds of the way through it Nick develops a lengthy examination of mortality, and this strongly connects with the central preoccupation of Soul Dust itself, which is that consciousness confers joy upon the organism whose brain generates it, and, quite simply, the evolutionary function of consciousness is that conscious beings gain a competitive advantage over their merely robotic competitors because they are able to invest, as it were, supernumerary effort because it feels so good being conscious. The ‘Hard Problem’ and Secondary Qualities Questioning him after he delivered his actual talk to the Ethical Society on 9 October, I asked – in view particularly of his spot-on analysis of the so-called hard problem within his book A History... – why he has never employed the term secondary qualities in order to delineate as unambiguously as possible to others (particularly the almost-to-a-man deluded community of professional philosophers) exactly what he (and myself, as it happens) mean when we use the word ‘consciousness’. For ‘secondary qualities’ is surely just the concept which has worried him so intensively, and especially during the past two decades. Yet Nick eschews the nomenclature, indicating a dislike of it during his answer, but I was unable to pursue him on the point due to the host of other questioners. Just one more criticism, and this time it’s a conceptual one: Nick agreed with me that not only the sensed environment of the conscious organism, but also its internal bodily status – which clearly includes the non-cognitive component of emotional responses – are unequivocally what I am calling secondary qualities (and the ER Editor entirely concurs with this opinion) and that, therefore, to offer one specific secondary quality – i.e. joy – as an explanans for all the others invites charges of circularity. We still haven’t quite put our finger on how some solely physical system – i.e. a brain possessing the appropriate circuit topology – can generate secondary qualities for its bearer... or perhaps I should say as constituting its bearer. Again, to be fair Nick never promised the completed solution to Levine’s famously named Hard Problem, but hoped to have demonstrated that “at least now we can see a few cracks in it”. Certainly, his philosophical/scientific proposal that conscious organisms represent information within the frame of a (physically speaking) fictitious present is right, and l’ve never encountered anyone else except Gerald Edelman, myself and him who seem to have thought of it! So my recommendation is to buy this book. Not only will it be a delight to those of literary taste, but it keeps us up to date with Nick’s current interests and will hopefully provide positive feedback in the furtherance of, finally, truly effective research into the ultimately physical basis of consciousness.

Ethical Record, December 2011 9 VIEWPOINTS Graham Bell’s review of Neuroscience and morality This review, which appeared in the Oct 2011 issue of Ethical Record, is both illuminating in itself and also points to the enormous importance of the general topic of linkage between scientific and moral discourse. The book under review, by Patricia Churchland and published this year, is subtitled: ‘What Neuroscience tells us about Morality’. This clearly implies connections between science and morality by stating that the former can show us why the latter is as it is. As Graham goes on to say, Churchland regards moral behaviour as a totally natural phenomenon; as such, it is subject to scientific/causal analysis, with lines of explanation reaching into not only evolutionary biology, neuro-chemisry and psychology but also social environment and culture. As moral activity increasingly becomes an object of scientific explication, so a number of traditional modes of thinking about morality are eclipsed. As Graham points out, Churchland rightly sees that one such mode is the Kantian view that moral behaviour possesses a foundational rationality, one that is completely separate from emotion and free of natural causation of any kind. Another mode specified by Churchland is the Platonic argument that moral values exist in a metaphysical sphere beyond the natural world, and that they can be discovered as residing in that dimension. Finally, it is worth noting that the scientific perspective on moral phenomena actually goes back a long way. What of course is new is the huge expansion of research and data-acquisition within this perspective; but the latter was firmly established by the turn of the 20th century: as shown, for example, in Santayana’s Reason in Science (1906). Tom Rubens - London N4 Population Size Tom Rubens’ letter in the Ethical Record (November 2011) suggests that he recognizes that population size is an important factor in determining a nation’s economic well-being, but that he declines to accept that positive measures of population size control need to be adopted, apparently in the belief that natural developments will bring populations into balance with their resources. During the last few centuries the human race has made the considerable advances in technology which have improved the quality of life for many, but which have not eliminated overpopulation and consequent poverty and warfare. There is thus no reason to believe that natural developments alone will act to restrict the world’s population to a size in keeping with the world’s resources. Such results have only been achieved by nations that adopted positive measures to achieve that end. As Malthus pointed out, the only natural development that effectively restricts population growth is poverty, and we do not want that. Paul Rhodes’ letter, also in the Ethical Record (November 2011) broadly recognizes the population problem, but concludes with “in an ideal world we could sustain 7 billion people but this is not an ideal world”. This prompts the comment that our present enormous population sustains itself by the remorseless 10 Ethical Record, December 2011 consumption of non-renewable natural resources, and the destruction of the natural environment. Should we not be giving more consideration to the welfare of future generations? After all they will only exist because we have produced them. John Rayner – Wembley, Middx Shakespeare the Unconventional Donald Langdown (ER Nov 2011) makes a good case that Shakespeare was not religious, but we surely cannot agree that Corin the shepherd’s declaration in As You Like It (3:11) is either Shakespeare’s own opinion or “Humanist philosophy in a nutshell”. The convention, that the epitome of simple goodness is the honest labourer contented with his lot, is no part of Shakespeare’s robust humanism. He ridicules it, by making Touchstone point out that a shepherd gets his living by the copulation of cattle, “bawd to a bell-wether”, betraying a young ewe to a crooked-pated old ram. “If thou beest not damned for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds. I cannot see how else thou shouldst scape”. Donald Rooum – London E1 Why Shouldn’t I Lie? May I open by thanking Shahrar Ali for his thoughtful lecture of 23rd October. He makes a number of points which are valid additions to the ongoing debate. When I say that the language in which he states his case is, for some of us, a little difficult to imbibe, this is less of a criticism than a critique. Shahrar Ali makes many authentic points, and if we have to work a little harder to assess his viewpoint this is no bad thing. His style effectively prevents us from speed- reading and thus harvesting only the more salient points. At the outset, we are given the lecturer’s definition of lying rather than that of the basic word: a lie, and, though it may seem tedious it is necessary when adopting a scientific approach, to define exactly what the essential nature of the subject is. It is necessary to define, first of all, the exact meaning of the term ‘lie’. A deliberate statement of an untruth with the object of deceiving others, would be my definition. Thus, a literary work of fiction is not a lie, for though it invites the reader temporarily to suspend disbelief for the sake of an interesting story, such suspension is voluntary. The definition takes no regard of a possible justification for the telling of a lie, it merely establishes that in order to be a lie a statement must be untrue, known to be untrue, and promulgated with an intention to deceive. Once this has, in any situation, been established, we have a lie. Like a gun or a knife, a lie is neither good nor bad. What we have is an object, albeit an abstract one. Therefore, any harm which is done by the use of a lie must rest one-hundred percent with the liar – the person who is using the lie as a tool to achieve his or her ends. The comparison of using a gun with which to shoot someone is as near exact as any analogy can be. The gun is blameless and so is the lie. Guns, of course, are dangerous playthings; and so are lies.

Ethical Record, December 2011 11 To achieve a judgement of whether it is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ to lie brings us to the need to return, once more, to basics. The test of right and wrong must be whether or not any act, such as the telling of a lie, is to the benefit of the Universe, or any part of it. Our ability to judge such issues can only be in our knowledge and experience; in a universal context this is small beer indeed. There is a very wide discrepancy between the Universe and ourselves, and we should never forget this. It is dangerous to pontificate. Richard Eastburn-Hewitt – Hampton Wick, Middlesex. The Nature of Mind Mind is often referred to as if it were a self-sufficient, self-acting, independent entity housed somewhere, somehow, in the brain. However I would suggest that mind is in fact no more than the accumulation of thoughts and feelings resulting from the impact of experience (whether these are external to the body or internal to it, and whether consciously or sub-consciously apprehended) upon the senses, which are stored in the brain as memory and are accessible to our conscious awareness when the appropriate prompt or trigger mechanism acts upon the senses. One aspect of the mind that is often referred to is called its spiritual aspect, or the soul. This is spoken of as though it were something quite separate from and independent of mind, considered as the brain’s conscious awareness. However, I would suggest that these terms, soul or spiritual, actually refer to the ability of the mind to imagine or indeed to be caught up in the condition or state of being where only one’s more generous or constructive or generally approved inclinations or appetites prevail: a state which would be the equivalent of having a magnet possessing only a positive, idealistic, pole. But life necessarily, indeed usually, possesses its everyday and self- interested aspect. It is much as if we set ourselves (and adhere to) the object of never knowingly inflicting pain or loss upon another. But pure idealism, and the neglect of our everyday needs, however desirable may be made to appear, is essentially an unrealistic aspiration - although we can and should set ourselves the target of securing the approval of both ourselves and of like-minded others for our acts and thoughts. However we are not and cannot be possessed solely by ‘pure and noble thoughts’ or engage solely in ‘pure and noble deeds’! Indeed our minds are and must normally be engaged in the more mundane activities required to provide for and sustain the everyday requirements of life. To paraphrase Brecht, ‘First the stomach (ie our most pressing needs) and then the ideals’. So, while the contemplation of beauty or significance (the aim and end of art) may well be evoked by any life-experience that lifts our minds onto a disinterested plane, we are, naturally enough, mostly concerned with the benefits of our activities to ourselves and those to whom we feel sympathetically attached. Not everyone can be an ecstatic, a William Blake or a Thomas Traherne, and I daresay that at least some of their contemporaries found faults and defects even in them! Albert Adler - London Note: Some people find ecstasy when doing the washing-up. [Ed]

12 Ethical Record, December 2011 The Society’s AGM and its Objects At the Society’s AGM on 13 November 2011, I was taken aback by the summary withdrawal of Motion 6 (confirming the ban on any change in our Constitution being implemented before ratification by a members’ General Meeting), simply by agreement between the proposer and the chair, without the withdrawal even being put to the vote. Surely any motion on the agenda paper is under the jurisdiction of the meeting? If not, what is to prevent someone opposed to a controversial issue from proposing it, so as to preclude anyone else doing so, and then withdrawing it at the last minute? The wording of the motion was admittedly misleading, in that it merely set out the legal position, and perhaps it should have indicated that this legal position had already been breached by the General Committee. The fact is that a wad of new rules (which, if passed by a later Special General Meeting of the members, are to replace the existing Constitution) has already been drawn up, and some of it has already been implemented. As for the proposed (and desirable) revision of the Objects, I suggest that perhaps with the deletion of the word ‘freethought’ and the insertion of the word ‘scientific’ before ‘humanism’, the revised Objects be the same as our current Aims. In any case, it is important that the current negotiations with the Charity Commission do not present the Special General Meeting (to be called to agree the wording) with a fait accompli. Barbara Smoker - Bromley, Kent

NEW ADDITIONS to the Humanist Reference Library November 2011

Annas, Julia Intelligent virtue 2011 Bess, Michael Choices under fire 2006 Donaldson, Sue Zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights 2011 Gaut, Berys Art, emotions and ethics 2009 Gopnik, Adam Angels and ages 2009 Lilla, Mark The stillborn god 2007 Neiman, Susan Moral clarity 2009 Rai, Lal Deosa Human rights in the Hindu-Buddhist tradition 1995 Sommerville, C. John The decline of the secular university 2006 Trigg, Roger Religion in public life 2008 Widdows, Heather Global ethics 2011 Cathy Broad, Librarian

To receive regular Society news and programme updates via email, please contact Ben Partridge at [email protected]. Similarly, if you have any suggestions for speakers or event ideas, or would like to convene a Sunday afternoon informal, get in touch with Ben on 020 7061 6744.

The views expressed in this Journal are not necessarily those of the Society.

Ethical Record, December 2011 13 KIERKEGAARD ON COURAGE – BEFORE AND AFTER GOD Clare Carlisle, Kings College London Lecture to the Ethical Society, 13 November 2011 The Problem of Abraham’s Obedience Søren Kierkegaard’s 1843 book Fear and Trembling offers a provocative interpretation of biblical story of Abraham and Isaac (see Genesis 22). Both the original story and Kierkegaard’s discussion of it, have horrified readers who are confused and appalled by a father’s readiness to murder his innocent child. In this lecture, I want to consider whether there might be something of value in this story after all. Kierkegaard was writing for an age which seemed to be losing its faith, despite outward appearances of widespread conformity to Christian beliefs and practices. His philosophical style was similar to that of Socrates: In Plato’s dialogues, Socrates challenges Athenian citizens who assume they know what virtue is – and that they possess it – and through questioning leads them to realise their own ignorance. Similarly, Kierkegaard challenges his 19th-century readers who assume they know what Christian faith is and that they possess it. In Fear and Trembling, he uses the story of Abraham to accentuate the difficulty of faith. Kierkegaard suggests that if we look at Abraham from a purely ethical point of view, all we can say about him is that he is a murderer. However, from a religious point of view – which regards person’s relationship to God to have significance and value – Abraham is admirable, because he exhibits certain virtues: obedience, trust and courage. To praise Abraham’s obedience and trust is problematic. Shouldn’t he disobey a command so self-evidently contrary to his duty as a father, as well as contrary to his own wishes? (This is the view of the 18th-century German philosopher Kant.) And why is trust admirable in itself? Surely it’s only good to trust someone trustworthy – and shouldn’t the divine command to kill Isaac be taken as a sign that God’s goodness is not to be trusted? Courage in Plato’s Laches This leaves us with the possibility that it is Abraham’s courage that is admirable. This is a more promising view, because courage is widely recognised as a central and important human virtue. Courage isn’t just a moral quality (if we think of morality in a narrow way). It is an ability to cope well with fears and dangers that are integral to the human condition – the fear of death and loss, for example. And looked at from this perspective, the story of Abraham starts to come alive for non-religious readers, and perhaps in particular for contemporary humanists who have to think about ethical questions in the context of rapid cultural change – and also, as we shall see, cultural devastation. The idea that courage is a cardinal virtue that involves responding bravely to some basic aspects of human life can be found in Plato’s dialogue Laches (one of Plato’s early dialogues, thought to have been written between 399-387 BCE). The subject of this dialogue is courage: Socrates and his companions attempt to 14 Ethical Record, December 2011 define courage, but they end up, after several attempts, concluding that they have failed to do so. When Laches first tries to say what courage is, he defines it narrowly as the bravery exhibited by a soldier on the battlefield: ‘If a man is willing to remain at his post and to defend himself against the enemy without running away, then you may rest assured that he is a man of courage.’ However, Socrates rejects this: ‘I wanted to learn from you not only what constitutes courage for a soldier but for a horseman as well and for every sort of warrior. And I wanted to include not only those who are courageous in warfare but also those who are brave in dangers at sea, and the ones who show courage in illness and poverty and affairs of state; and then again I wanted to include not only those who are brave in the face of pain and fear but also those who are clever at fighting desire and pleasure, whether by standing their ground or by running away – because there are some men, aren’t there, Laches, who are brave in matters like these?’ Here we find the idea of battling not with an external enemy, but with one’s own desires when these lead one away from what is truly good. In the last part of Socrates’ speech, courage comes to stand for virtue as a whole. This isn’t what we would commonly recognise as courage, but most of what Socrates says views courage as a virtuous response to pain and fear of death. One thing to add here – drawing this time on Aristotle’s philosophy – is that courage, like all virtues, is a middle way between two extremes. Aristotle defines courage as the middle term (the mean) between cowardice and recklessness in the face of danger. Kierkegaard on Abraham’s Courage Why, then, is Abraham a man of courage? He faces up to the loss not of his own life, but of the life of his son. Kierkegaard makes it clear that Abraham values Isaac’s life more than his own, so that the death of his son is the most painful thing Abraham could face. Of course, in the case of Abraham, this is not just any kind of death, but death by his own hand, which makes it all the more difficult to bear. Kierkegaard sees the relationship between Abraham and Isaac as in a sense paradigmatic of all human relationships. His interpretation of the biblical story focuses on two key moments: 1 The image of Abraham and Isaac at the top of Mount Moriah, Isaac bound on the altar, the father’s knife raised over his son – the moment before the reprieve comes, and Abraham is allowed to sacrifice a ram instead. 2 The moment after the reprieve, when Abraham receives Isaac back again – ‘he receives a son a second time’. Kierkegaard wants to hold these moments together, to juxtapose them. The first moment, in which the death and loss of one’s beloved is a real and vivid possibility, is actually every moment of Ethical Record, December 2011 15 our lives. This is because death and loss can happen at any moment: ‘Every moment to see the sword hanging over the beloved’s head and yet to find, not rest in the pain of resignation, but joy by virtue of the absurd – that is miraculous. The one who does that is great, the only great person.’ Here, courage is understood as a response to the vulnerability and fragility that is an essential feature of all human life – and especially of human relationships, which is the point where both suffering and joy are at their most intense. According to Kierkegaard, it is difficult to find joy under the shadow of this vulnerability (under the shadow of the knife) – but this is the achievement of Abraham’s courage. In Kierkegaard’s imagining of the story, Abraham maintains a joyful relationship to Isaac before, during and after the trial of the journey to Mount Moriah. Notice the difference here from Socrates’ view of courage: for the Greek philosopher, courage not only confronts pain, but fights pleasure and desire. For Kierkegaard, however, courage confronts and accepts pain and suffering, but it also confronts and accepts happiness. It does not, in resignation, give up family ties and attachments. The highest form of religious life is not a ‘monastic movement’. Kierkegaardian faith does not withdraw from the world, but lives worldly life in all its emotional intensity. Jonathan Lear: Loss of Our Form of Life In his account of Abraham’s courage, Kierkegaard focuses on the vulnerability and fragility of personal relationships. But there are other kinds of vulnerability that human beings have to live with – including the possibility that our whole way of life might come to an end. This can be a personal crisis, like the loss of one’s job or being forced to leave one’s country and culture. But – and this is perhaps more philosophically interesting – the loss of a way of life can be a collective event, a cultural crisis. Collectively, we do face the possibility that our culture, our form of life, might come to an end, change so much that it becomes unrecognisable. For example, as a university lecturer I face the possibility that the academic way might come to an end, since it is not certain that there will be universities in 20 years time. Or we might think of the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century, or the closure of mines in the 20th century – both events that devastated whole communities. The American philosopher Jonathan Lear has written about this kind of loss in his 2006 book Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation: ‘Even when we try to think about the world we inhabit, think about ourselves and our lives, we take a risk that the very concepts with which we think may become unintelligible.’ Lear focuses on the example of the Crow, one of the American Indian tribes, whose traditional nomadic way of life – hunting buffalo, fighting other tribes – ended when they had to move onto a reservation in the 1880s. Lear shows that the tribe’s values – their very conception of the good life, including of course their conception of courage – were so embedded in their way of life that when this changed the Crow suffered a profound loss of meaning. The tribe’s chief, Plenty Coups, expressed this loss by saying, ‘After this, nothing happened.’ 16 Ethical Record, December 2011 Lear’s philosophical analysis of virtue in the face of cultural devastation draws on both Plato and Kierkegaard. His view of the human condition echoes Kierkegaard’s interpretation of Abraham in its emphasis on finitude and vulnerability: ‘Courage is a virtue because it is an excellent way of coping with, responding to, and manifesting a basic fact about us: that we are finite erotic creatures. By finite I mean to point to a family of limitations that characterise the human condition: we are not all-powerful or all-knowing; our ability to create is limited; so is our ability to get what we want; our beliefs may be false; and even the concepts with which we understand the world are vulnerable… By erotic I follow a basically Platonic conception that, in our finite condition of lack, we reach out to the world in yearning, longing, admiration and desire for that which (however mistakenly) we take to be valuable, beautiful and good… [We may consider courage] as the ability to live well with the risks that inevitably attend human existence. To be human is necessarily to be a vulnerable risk-taker; to be a courageous human is to be good at it.’ The Stillness of Courage One point we can add to Lear’s analysis here is that there’s a stillness in courage. This is brought out when we remember that – as Aristotle points out – courage is a middle way between fearful flight and reckless, thoughtless combat. Courage means being able to stand still and confront the frightening thing – and in fact this takes us back to Laches’ first definition of courage. Even though it’s rejected by Socrates for being too narrow, there’s nevertheless a truth in it. The stillness of courage is necessary for the development of wisdom – for only in this stillness can one see things clearly, understand the situation, and find the appropriate response. Thought of in this way, courage is not just an active, assertive, masculine virtue, but equally passive and receptive. As he raises the knife over Isaac’s body, Abraham is able to hear the angel calling him – because even in the midst of his suffering, his heart is quiet and attentive. His courage enables him to listen. To conclude, then: It is clear that Kierkegaard’s discussion of Abraham presents an account of religious faith that’s initially crazy and offensive to secular ears. However, if we can look beyond this, we find an account of courage that fits not just with Christian doctrine, but with human existence as such: its finitude and fragility, on both a personal level and also in collective, cultural terms. Indeed, without the Christian hope for eventual restoration (in an afterlife) of what has been lost, loss becomes more final, and so more frightening. Kierkegaard himself foresaw the Christian way of life coming to an end. He believed that the perpetuation of this way of life in 19th century Denmark concealed a decline of authentic faith – which would eventually manifest itself outwardly, socially, in the decay of Christian culture. And this is, of course, what has happened, at least in Europe. Without belief in God and traditional moral values, the risks and vulnerabilities of human life become all the more overt. This means that courage is perhaps even more important in post-Christian, secular societies. Ethical Record, December 2011 17 THE BLACKHAM ARCHIVE Anita Miller, volunteer archivist

In August 2010, just a year and a half after Harold Blackham’s death at the age of 106, I started work on sorting and cataloguing his archives. These had been left to South Place Ethical Society shortly before he died, and several boxes of books and papers were collected from his home by Norman Bacrac and Jennifer Jeynes and brought to Conway Hall for safekeeping. Harold Blackham has justifiably been called the ‘architect of the humanist movement’, so priority was given by Librarian Cathy Broad to cataloguing the three boxes of papers brought to SPES that comprised the archive, in order to make them available to researchers. This task was completed in August 2011 by me, and details of the collection can now be viewed on the library catalogue, Heritage. It will be available online later in the year, which will attract a wider body of interest to the Library and the work of the Ethical Society. The archive has been organised into 12 boxes, archive reference BLA/1- 10, and is currently available for reference to readers in the Library. Although the bulk of the Blackham archive deals with his activities from the 1960s to 1990s i.e. the middle and later years of his life, a small section I have titled ‘Personal Papers’ (BLA/1) includes an a letter from his tutor, Lancelot John Pope, and a copy of a testimonial from Stanton Coit in 1935. This section also contains copies of BA examination papers from the University of Birmingham where Blackham was a student of literature and ethics. Two sections of the archive contain papers belonging to his first wife, Olga (1896-1976) and his sister, Olive. Olga Blackham’s archive (BLA/2) includes her manuscript journal of a cruise to the Adriatic she took with Harold in 1938, and a short memoir of her life written by him after her death. There are also several chapters of a book she wrote ‘The Last of the Past – Fragments of a Rural Culture’ and scripts of stories and plays she attempted to publish. Olive Blackham (1899-2002) was the founder and director of Roel Puppets and the archive contains programmes and newsletters from her theatrical productions (BLA/3). There is a large amount of correspondence (BLA/4) between 1941 and 2003, including letters from Henry Snell, James Hemming, Harry Stopes-Roe and others. There is an interesting exchange of letters (BLA/4A1-6) between Blackham and James Hemming following a critical review of Hemming’s work by Harold Blackham in 1986. The archive gives a particularly good insight into Blackham’s ideas through the typescripts of the numerous articles he wrote and lectures given during 1970-1980 (BLA/5). Many of these contain his manuscript notes and alterations, and include The Humanist Tradition in Education, Two Moral Traditions and The Way I Think. There is also a typed copy of The Fable As Literature and Conditions of Morality amongst many other works, as well as shorthand notebooks containing his thoughts on philosophy and literature. 18 Ethical Record, December 2011 Blackham’s Autobiographical Memoir Blackham’s recollections of his own life can be found in a 274 page autobiographical memoir which he wrote following his wife, Olga’s death (BLA/5/63). The file includes a three page introduction by Barbara Smoker in which she describes the narrative as ‘the story of the times’, and refers to the suicide of Blackham’s father when the boy was eight years old. The memoir vividly charts Blackham’s life from age 16. He recounts his early teaching career, courtship and marriage, and expounds his developing moral philosophy from Protestant to Humanist. Blackham also retained contracts and royalty statements from various publishers over the years and these can be found in BLA/6. Throughout his life, Blackham was involved with numerous organisations, such as the Social Morality Council where he co-founded the Journal of Moral Education. Papers relating to these organisations can be found in BLA/7, and they give an insight into the difficulties he and his colleagues encountered in establishing humanist principles in education and the wider society. In the 1970s he campaigned for moral education in schools and the archive contains correspondence with the Department of Education during this period (BLA/7/1) as well as minutes and agendas of meetings held by the movement. Of course, Blackham was actively involved with South Place Ethical Society and the archive reflects his engagement through a series of papers relating to the new Trust Deed, amongst other legal documents concerning SPES (BLA/7/2). Other organisations documented in the archive are the World Development Movement (BLA/7/3), the British Humanist Association and the Rationalist Press Association (BLA/7/4) and the British Association of Counselling (BLA/7/5). Finally, there is a collection of miscellaneous writings by colleagues such as Derek Wright, Harry Stopes-Roe and others (BLA/8). Blackham also kept a folder of newspaper cuttings (BLA/9) and general leaflets and ephemera (BLA/10). Unfortunately, this archive does not contain significant archival material from the beginning of Blackham’s career, but what he left us will be a source of interest to all students of humanism, as they provide a unique insight into the life of one of its great British free-thinkers. THE HUMANIST REFERENCE LIBRARY The Humanist Reference Library is open for members and researchers on Mondays to Fridays from 0930 - 1730. Please let the Librarian know of your intention to visit. The Library has an extensive collection of new and historic freethought material.

Members are now able to borrow books from the Library. Readers will be asked to complete a Reader Registration Form, and must provide photographic ID, proof of address and proof of membership. They will be issued with a Reader’s card, which will enable them to borrow three books at a time. The loan period is one month. Journals, archive material, artworks and other non-book material cannot be borrowed. Full details of the lending service are available from the Librarian. Cathy Broad, Librarian Tel: 020 7061 6747. Email: [email protected]

Ethical Record, December 2011 19 GLOBAL CAPITALISM—GOOD OR BAD? Tom Rubens

Following Norman Bacrac’s participation in a programme about sense-experience, broadcast on ‘Resonance FM’ {104.4 FM} radio on 17 October, I took part in a more recent ‘Resonance’ programme on 15 November. This was on the above subject. As with all these programmes, the interviewer was Grant Bartley, Assistant Editor of the journal Philosophy Now. My co-participants were Richard Baron, teacher of philosophy at the Mary Ward Centre, and Neil Kellard, Chair of Finance at the University of Essex.

We all took a critical look at the current system of global capitalism, with the aims of defining it, identifying its merits and demerits, and predicting its future. Given the massive dimensions of the subject, none of these aims was easy to achieve, and perhaps none was fully achieved. However, in the course of discussion, several economic and political ideas of unquestionably first-order importance were articulated on all sides: which is something comparatively rare in the mass media. A Radical Overhaul of the System Needed Despite a few areas of common agreement, the participants fell broadly into two separate camps. One, consisting of Neil Kellard and myself, held the view that the system needs a very radical overhaul, with much more regulation imposed both on banks and corporations. We also advocated greater linkage between economic activity and democratic political procedure—indeed, democratic values in general. The other camp—Richard Baron—accepted the argument about regulation of banks but insisted that industrial companies, even the biggest, should be allowed to ply their path unhindered, shorn of government protection and help and exposed to the full force of competition from other players. Hence Richard’s model of capitalism appeared to be the classic 19th century laissez faire one, according to which open competition is and should be the sole determinant of economic outcomes. Against this argument, Neil and myself pointed to the problem raised by the very existence of huge corporations: that their dominative power militates against genuine competition. Thus, if these companies are (even without government help) allowed to remain as big as they are now, there is the question of how really competitive conditions, and therefore a genuine market, can be established. We suggested that such conditions could only be created by political, governmental action to curb the giant corporations. Richard was against such interventionism, yet offered no alternative to it as a way of achieving the scenario he favoured. Other issues were explored, including the economic relationship between the West and the Third World, and the connection between poverty and population growth. All in all, by programme’s end, we felt we had conveyed a range of pivotal facts and ideas, and given listeners, as well as ourselves, a considerable amount to think about in the future. (The programme may be heard on www.philosophynow.org/podcasts) 20 Ethical Record, December 2011 SOCIALISM AND SECULARISM: AN UNEASY COMRADESHIP Terry Liddle Lecture to the Ethical Society, 20 November 2011

The dilemma that exists at the heart of the relationship between socialism and secularism was well expressed by TA Jackson, “With the Independent Labour Party ... there had been acrimonious complaints that I had habitually paraded my atheism on the Socialist platform. Now I found some of the old Bradlaughites complaining that 1 habitually waved the Red Flag over the Freethought platform”. Jackson had been an open air orator with both the ILP and the National Secular Society. Jackson later became a founding and leading member of the Communist Party. Socialism and Secularism were two of the revolutionary ideas, still resounding today, which arose out of the intellectual ferment, the Age of Reason, in the 18th century. Socialism first appeared in print in the 1820s and Secularism was coined a little later by George Holyoake. Holyoake was himself an Owenite Socialist and a pioneer of co-operation. When he died, around 500 co-operative societies subscribed to erect a building in his memory. Holyoake versus Bradlaugh Holyoake’s main opponent in the Secularist movement was Charles Bradlaugh. Bradlaugh, while on the radical wing of Liberalism and advocating abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords, was a decided anti-socialist. In 1864 the International Workingmen’s Association, the First International, was formed. Karl Marx who was invited to join by Victor Le Lubez, a close friend of Bradlaugh, became a leading member. Marx and Bradlaugh clashed bitterly. This is dealt with more closely in Deborah Levin’s recent Socialist History Society pamphlet Marx contra Bradlaugh. The Paris Commune of 1871, which Bradlaugh opposed and Marx lauded, saw a revival of British republicanism. The movement was split. On the one hand was the National Republican Brotherhood led by John De Morgan, a member of the First International from Cork, and on the other Bradlaugh’s National Republican League. To complicate matters there was a third organization, the Universal Republican League of which Dan Chatterton was a member. Again, the clash was between revolutionary proto-socialists and Liberals advocating the inevitability of gradualness. Hyndman versus Bradlaugh Socialism had been revived in 1883 by H M Hyndman, who debated in 1884 with Bradlaugh. It is unclear who won the debate but within 6 months, two of those who led the NSS, Edward Aveling and Annie Besant, became socialists. In East London, the Stratford Branch of the NSS led by Tom Lemon and Ambrose Barker, wanting to discuss and act on social problems as well as theology, broke away to form the Stratford Radical and Dialectical Club. Among the speakers at the Club was Chatterton. It became the Labour Emancipation League; it affiliated to Hyndman’s Social Democratic Federation and then the Ethical Record, December 2011 21 Socialist League of William Morris. Gott and Ridley In West Yorkshire, the NSS suffered another split and the British Secular League was formed. The aged Holyoake was its President and its leading figure was JW Gott, the last Briton to be imprisoned for blasphemy. Gott was a member of the SDF and was expelled for his pamphlet attacking Christ. Later with Jackson, Gott formed the Freethought Socialist League. Gott produced a hard hitting paper, the Truthseeker. This he distributed along with the men’s clothing, Bradlaugh boots at ten and six a pair and tea he sold. His customers were happy with the tea and clothing but many were far from happy with the anti-clerical propaganda. Gott was diabetic and the harsh terms of imprisonment imposed upon him undoubtedly contributed to his premature death. Frank A Ridley, a leading figure in the ILP, joined the NSS in 1940 and eventually replaced Chapman Cohen as editor of The Freethinker and RH Rosetti as NSS President. Ridley wrote over 500 articles for The Freethinker, including a moving obituary of Jackson. There arose a dispute over who should represent the NSS in a BBC Radio broadcast, Ridley or the Society’s secretary. Ridley resigned. As Bob Morell put it in his short biography of Ridley, The Gentle Revolutionary, “There were many in the Society who considered Ridley to have been shabbily treated.” It was felt Ridley had been deposed by those who opposed his revolutionary socialist politics. Today, his portrait hangs next to that of Bradlaugh in the Secular Hall in Leicester. At his funeral in 1994, old opponents had come together to honour a great socialist and secularist. The Socialist Secular Association I joined the NSS in the wake of the Gay News trail and became a member of the Council. I was highly critical of the then President Barbara Smoker and was the only person to stand against her during her 25 years in office. Amid controversy and accusations of conspiracy, Colin Mills and I left to form the SSA under the slogan ‘Socialism, Liberty, Freethought’. Ridley became President. Heated polemics between Barbara Smoker, Antony Flew, Colin Mills and I raged in the pages of Socialist Secular News. We republished Ridley’s 1946 pamphlet Socialism and Religion. Alas it was not possible, mainly due to financial problems, to sustain the SSA but 1 feel there is still a need for such an organization. In 1983 1 came to Conway Hall to lecture on Socialism and Secularism. I stated there were three positions socialism and secularism could take towards each other. Firstly, that secularism and socialism were antithetical, secondly that secularism is an apolitical question and thirdly, that secularism and socialism are complementary. That was the view of the SSA. Nearly 30 years on we live in a world of growing religious fundamentalism and theocratic tyranny. Kingcraft and priestcraft and capitalism, which use religion as an ideological buttress, still need to be overthrown and gods driven from the skies and capitalists from the earth. In this world historic task, socialism and secularism can work together. 22 Ethical Record, December 2011 ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING OF THE S. P. ETHICAL SOCIETY Sunday 13 November 2011 The AGM considered six motions. The result for each motion is underlined. 1. The name of the Society is the South Place Ethical Society. This information should feature prominently on all letters, notices, documents and posters dealing with the Society and its activities. Proposer: Terry Mullins, seconder: Marina Ingham. Remitted to the GC. [ To be discussed in January] 2. That the Society’s name (not just the name of the Hall) shall appear prominently on all its publicity materials. Proposer: Barbara Smoker, seconder: Diane Murray. Remitted to the GC. [ To be discussed in January] 3. We instruct the General Committee to ensure that the Library situated on the first floor of Conway Hall is returned to its traditional use as the Society’s main meeting room for its own meetings and for groups authorised by the Society. Proposer: Barbara Ward, seconder: John Rayner. Withdrawn by the Proposer. 4. We request the Society's management committee to organise symposia-style meetings on Sunday afternoons, to be attended primarily by members of the Society, at which members may discuss and develop thoughts upon the Society’s Objects, which are: ‘The study and dissemination of ethical principles and the cultivation of a rational religious sentiment’. Proposer: John Rayner, seconder Eileen Bostle. The AGM voted to accept the following Amendment, proposed by Norman Bacrac: Delete all words after “Society’s” and replace them with the word “Aims”. The motion as amended was then carried.

5. This AGM instructs the General Committee to reconsider and revoke its decision to charge an admission fee for Sunday morning lectures. Proposer: Donald Rooum, seconder: Barbara Smoker. Carried. [ After discussion, the GC on 7 December voted to maintain the new admission charge policy.]

6. That any changes to the Society’s Constitution and Objects must remain in abeyance until passed by a general meeting of the membership. Proposer: Diane Murray, seconder: Barbara Smoker. Withdrawn by the Proposer.

SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Reg. Charity No. 251396 Founded in 1793, the Society is a progressive movement whose aims are: the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism and freethought the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life, and the advancement of research and education in relevant fields. We invite to membership those who reject supernatural creeds and are in sympathy with our aims. At Conway Hall the programme includes Sunday lectures, discussions, evening courses and the Conway Hall Sunday Concerts of chamber music. The Society maintains a Humanist Reference Library. The Society’s journal, Ethical Record, is issued monthly. Memorial meetings may be arranged. The current annual subscription is £20 (£15 if a full-time student, unwaged or over 65), to be increased to £35 (£25) from 1 January 2012.

Ethical Record, December 2011 23 PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC1R 4RL. Tel: 020 7405 1818 Registered Charity No. 251396 For programme updates, email: [email protected] Website: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk Note: Admission to Sunday morning lectures is free for members of SPES and £3 for non-members. For other events, no charge unless stated Sunday meetings are held in the Brockway Room. DECEMBER 2011 Sunday 11 WHAT IS RELIGIOUS BELIEF? AN ATHEIST’S PERSPECTIVE. 1100 Tim Crane, Knightsbridge Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge 1430 DISCUSSION - FAMINE RELIEF and SAVE THE CHILDREN (free) Sunday 18 PHILOSOPHY NOW MAGAZINE’S 20th ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL *** All welcome for the whole day – all events free *** 1100 THE POET OF NATURE: GEORGE SANTAYANA ON LUCRETIUS. Tim Madigan Festival lecturers include at 1400 Mark Vernon, Anthony O’Hear (1500) and Roger Scruton (1715) See philosophynow.org for full programme of the day’s debates, children’s events and awards 1930 20th Anniversary Party: Speeches, music, drinks and nibbles. All welcome JANUARY 2012 Sunday 8 1100 ETHICS, CURRICULA AND BELIEFS John Tillson Sunday 15 1100 THE CULT OF CONFIDENCE Nicholas Fearn Sunday 22 1100 Title to be confirmed Kenan Malik Sunday 29 1100 THE SCIENCE DELUSION: freeing the spirit of inquiry. Rupert Sheldrake CONWAY HALL EVENING CLASSES, JANUARY 2012 From January 2012, historic Holborn venue Conway Hall is running the following evening classes which have been specially developed for a general audience by members of the Humanist Philosophers’ Group: Brendan Larvor, Peter Cave and Prof. Richard Norman: Exploring Humanism: a 6 week basic introduction to what Humanism is and what Humanists believe and do. Aspects of Humanism: an 8 session, 16 hour in-depth course on the history and philosophy behind Humanist beliefs. Applied Ethics: a 5 part look at differing approaches to moral thinking and action throughout history. Death and Dying: 4 sessions exploring the significance of death, from murder and suicide to terminal illness; the meaning of life and immortality. Each course will be running twice and will be tutored by members of the London School of Philosophy. The first sessions will take place from 24 January to 22 March, with the second round running from 1 May until 19 June 2012. Each session will be priced at £10, but there is a discounted rate of £7 per session if two whole courses are booked. To make a booking or for more information about dates, tutors and further details on course content, please email [email protected] or call 020 7061 6744 or look up www.conwayhall.org.uk/courses

SPES’s CONWAY HALL SUNDAY CONCERTS 2012 Tickets on the door (£8/£4 concessions). 6.30pm Full details on: www.conwayhallsundayconcerts.org.uk

Published by the South Place Ethical Society, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, WC1R 4RL Printed by J.G. Bryson (Printer). 156-162 High Road, London N2 9AS. ISSN 0014 - 1690