ISSUE 133 AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2019

PhilosophyNow
a magazine of ideas

On the
Shoulders
of Giants
Scientific Progress
and the
Scientific Process

Biology and
Personal
Identity

The Nature
of Evil

Aristotle
and the
Good Ruler
S TA N F O R D U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S

Creation and Anarchy

What Would The Work of Art and the
Be Different Religion of Capitalism
Figures of Possibility Giorgio Agamben,
in Adorno Translated by
Iain Macdonald Adam Kotsko
MERIDIAN:
CROSSING AESTHETICS

Unpublished
Fragments
(Spring 1885– History in
Spring 1886) Financial Times
Volume 16 Amin Samman
Friedrich Nietzsche CURRENCIES:
N EW T H I N K I N G F O R
Translated, with F I NA N C I A L T I M E S
an Afterword, by
Adrian Del Caro

Ordinary
Giving Way Unhappiness
Thoughts on The Therapeutic
Unappreciated Fiction of
Dispositions David Foster Wallace
Steven Connor Jon Baskin
FORTHCOMING S Q UA R E O N E :
IN OCTOBER F I R S T O R D E R Q U E S T I O N S
IN THE HUMANITIES

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stanfordpress.typepad.com
Philosophy Now ISSUE 133 Aug/Sept 2019
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 GRANT AT TATE MODERN © PAUL GREGORY 2016
Editorial Scientific Knowledge
T
he scientific method is the path to knowledge in the
secular age, many would say (especially secularists).
But which science? Physics, biology, anthropology,
sociology? And which method? Experiments, field
observations, mathematical modelling, or some combination of
these? And which knowledge? Current scientific knowledge, or
some future ideal scientific knowledge?
Welcome to our issue on science and philosophy. Two of
the articles reflect on what biology can tell us about personal
identity, a key question in philosophy. But the first three pieces
look at the nature of the scientific method itself. And one thing
they collectively demonstrate is that there is no single ‘scientific
method’. There are actually several different methods, and
which is used depends on what is being investigated. For
instance, as far as I know, no experiment has ever been done to
test the theory of evolution of whole new species by natural
selection. Rather, that foundational scientific theory is based on
the interpretation of observations of the natural world and the
fossil record. A very general description of scientific activity
might be “Trying hard to get your theory to match what you
can see.” But even this basic aim isn’t particularily well met in
modern theoretical physics. No dark matter or dark energy has
ever been observed. (Obviously? Inevitably?) Rather, those
concepts have been invented to explain anomalies that don’t fit
current cosmological or other theories – in the structure of
spiral galaxies, particularly. Rossen Vassilev’s piece on ‘Einstein
versus the Logical Positivists’ examines, and calls to task, the
idea that modern physics can be a domain of purely maths-
based metaphysical speculation.
In our opening article Will Bouwman describes the devel-
opment of theories of gravity over the last 2,500 years, and
ponders what this tells us about scientific progress in general.
Philosophers of science talk of there being a succession of
‘models’ of reality, formed from ideas and equations. For
example, Einstein’s equations provided a model of reality
different to that provided by Newton’s equations; and so on
throughout science.
Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn believed that to be
accepted, new models have to explain everything the old ones do
– account for all the phenomena their equations explain – but
also explain new data inexplicable on the old model. As a science
progresses, its models give ever more comprehensive and mathe-
matically precise ways of understanding, predicting, and manip-
ulating aspects of the world. Einstein’s equations are a more
accurate description of the phenomena that Newton’s equations
also cover (and more besides), but Newton’s equations remain a
close enough approximation in most everyday circumstances.
Bouwman describes how Newton’s own theory of gravity both
replaced and built upon earlier versions by Galileo, and by
Aristotle. As Newton himself wrote in 1675 “If I have seen
further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
4 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019
Two philosophical implications immediately spring from
this understanding of scientific knowledge. First, let’s apply
induction to the history of science itself, as part of the newly
invented (by me, just now) science of scienceology (not to be
confused with scientology, whose only apparent connection
with science is that it shares its first five letters). That history
shows that even successful and apparently stable scientific
models (or as Kuhn said, paradigms) have always eventually
been superseded. We have no good reason to think that this has
now ceased, so we must conclude that the scientific models we
have now aren’t the ones we’re going to have in fifty, a
hundred, or a thousand years time. Perhaps the only sure scien-
tific knowledge we can draw from the history of science, then,
is that our present scientific knowledge is wrong!
But what about all the near-miraculous technology and
medicine that science generates? It must be doing something
right. Well, to say present scientific knowledge is wrong
perhaps mischaracterises the situation a little. We know our
current theories work to the extent that they accurately predict
experimental results and produce technology; and in some
cases this means they work amazingly well. To this extent, they
are valid. As mentioned, any acceptable future models would
have to successfully incorporate their successes, as well as the
anomalous data that makes the new model necessary. In this
sense, good science is usually a continuation and not an
overthrow of previous good science.
However, the second thing that stands out from the history of
science, is that a new model always differs from the old in one
very significant way: metaphysically. It isn’t just about better
mathematical descriptions; each new scientific paradigm we
adopt make us think of reality itself very differently – sometimes
absolutely differently – from the old. For Newton, space and
time were an absolute, unchanging framework in which stuff
happens; whereas for Einstein spacetime changes with the
observer’s motion (technically speaking, with the inertial frame
of reference of the observer). Darwin’s new paradigm makes us
think in terms of the evolution of species and the continuity of
humanity with other animals, rather than, say, in terms of the
unchanging nature of species and the radical distinctiveness of
humanity. Our interview with John Dupré interestingly
continues the line of thinking of biology in terms of its processes.
In simple terms, even though it might in other ways incorporate
our previous scientific understanding, every time a major new
model is accepted, our understanding of the nature of reality flips.
I suppose that’s what you get for doing flipping science. It also
means that although our models will become increasingly data-
encompassing and precise, unless scientific progress is ever
completed (and that’s unknowable right now), we’ll never get a
scientific model that shows us how things really are.
Watch this spacetime for further developments.
Grant Bartley
• Michel Serres • Transgenic monkeys
• Humans “quite nice” say researchers
News reports by Anja Steinbauer
Brainy Monkeys
In an attempt to better understand human
intelligence, Chinese scientists have
implanted human genes in monkey brains.
The gene microcephalin (MCPH1),
thought to play a crucial role in human fetal
brain development, was implanted in the
brains of eleven rhesus monkey embryos by
means of an engineered virus. Their brain
development took longer than normal but
the six who survived to adulthood
performed much better than their peers in a
control group when tested for short term
memory and reaction times.
The study by Lei Shi and others,
published in the Beijing journal National
Science Review, was a collaboration
between Kunming Institute of Zoology in
Yunan, the Chinese Academy of Sciences
and the University of North Carolina.
The Poison, the Fish & the Solution
In order to demonstrate that a chemical
substance is not harmful to humans or
animals, the European Union requires
extensive tests, among them data that show
at which concentration the substance will
kill 50% of fish. Toxicological tests that
yield such information kill millions of fish
per year both in the EU and the US, a
moral issue of which many practical ethi-
cists are not aware.
Kristin Schirmer, professor of environ-
mental toxicology in Dübendorf, has found
a solution. She proposes using cells from
the gills of rainbow trout instead of live
fish. The new measure of toxicity would be
about showing at what point 50% of the
gill cells die. Her method has passed all
initial institutional and scientific hurdles
and may well replace the old procedure
within the next two years.
Michel Serres
Influential French philosopher Michel
Serres died on 1 June at the age of 88. The
author of more than fifty books, Serres was
a pacifist and champion of dialogue
between the sciences and the humanities.
Hailing from Agen in the south of France,
Serres studied Philosophy and became
professor for the history of science at the
Sorbonne in 1969. From 1984 onwards he
also regularly lectured at Stanford Univer-
sity. In 1990 he became a member of the
prestigious Académie Française. On being
awarded the Meister Eckhart Prize in
Germany in 2012 he was lauded for his
“brilliant insight into the structures of
thought.” We will publish a full obituary in
our next issue.
People are Nicer Than You Think
Swiss and US scientists have published
surprising results of an international study
in the journal Science. They conducted an
‘honesty’ test in 355 cities in 49 different
countries, which, though simple, is reveal-
ing in its conclusions. They left wallets
lying in the street to observe if finders
would ignore, keep or try to return them to
their rightful owners. They used about
17,000 wallets, all equipped with the name
AI Exhibition Review
Ever wanted to smell the flowers of a tree
that humans cut to extinction in 1912? Or
to give your therapist a Turing Test?
Then the Barbican, London, is where you
need to be right now. Co-curated by
philosopher Dr Suzanne Livingston and
running until 26 August, AI: More Than
Human is a thought provoking, thor-
oughly interactive exhibition.
It opens by placing the pursuit of Arti-
ficial Intelligence within the context of the
perennial human desire to awake the
inanimate. Traditional Shinto beliefs, the
Jewish Golem, alchemy, and Frankenstein
are all explored as expressions of this
desire. Visitors are then treated to a thor-
ough history of AI as we know it today,
from Ada Lovelace to AlphaGo. The
timelines and reading materials are plenti-
ful here, but neatly presented on interac-
tive screens. Those that don’t need a
history lesson can simply enjoy the
impressive collection of historical arte-
August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 5
News
and contact details of their ‘owners’, some
including keys, some without but most
with differing amounts of money.
The greatest surprise was that the
higher the amounts of cash involved were,
the more likely it was that they would be
returned. Of the wallets with no money
about 40% were returned to their owners.
Amounts of about €12 increased this
percentage to 51. In further tests in Poland,
the US and the UK with amounts of €80,
71% were returned. The pattern was the
same in all test countries.
Furthermore, the researchers asked
members of the public, including top
economists, whether they thought that
wallets with money would be handed back.
The overwhelming majority believed that
particularly higher amounts would be kept
rather than returned. “The study demon-
strates that our image of human beings is
too negative,” commented coauthor Chris-
tian Lukas Zünd of Zurich University.
facts, prototype robots, and examples of
AI on display.
The second half of the exhibition
reveals and revels in the vastly varied
world of contemporary artificial intelli-
gence. Interacting with this world, visitors
can contribute to the aesthetic education
of AI, create data about the emotional
experiences of drivers, watch a digitally
synthesised Obama deliver a real speech
on TV, communicate face-to-face with
the eerie Alter 3, and much more. Many
of the exhibits draw out philosophical
questions ranging from the ethical to the
linguistic. Others point towards a future
that is sometimes frightening and always
fascinating. Fittingly for the Barbican,
there is a slight emphasis on the artistic
avenues of artificial intelligence and this
delivers a fresh take on the accelerating
technology. AI: More Than Human leaves
you feeling that the world of AI can offer
beauty, the sublime, and new ways of
creatively understanding the world. TBG
Science
Philosophy of Science
The First 2½ Millennia
Will Bouwman asks what really matters when studying matter.
W ith which of these three propositions do you most agree?
A scientific theory must be:
1) A logically coherent explanation.
2) Supported by evidence.
3) Useful.
If you are firmly of the opinion that one of these is the defining
feature of science, then in philosophical terms you are either (1) a
rationalist, (2) an empiricist, or (3) a pragmatist. Moreover, if you
happen to be a scientist, then it is likely that your main interest is
(1) Theoretical, (2) Experimental, or (3) Instrumental. More generally,
you might just like to (1) Have an idea about how something works,
(2) Find out how it works, or (3) Just make it work.
When philosophers of science are doing what they are paid for,
one of the key things they consider is what blend of the above
elements makes an activity a science. On the face of it, it should-
n’t be all that difficult to work out. There are only three variables;
how hard can it be?
Rather than think in terms of abstract ideas, it’s probably easier
to copy many philosophers of science and look at examples from his-
tory. The story of gravity is a useful example of the development of
scientific understanding, because it’s something we all experience,
its science involves all of the above points, and it’s still a mystery.
There’s a simple story about how ideas about gravity developed up
to the twentieth century, according to which it’s a hop, skip and a
jump from Aristotle to Galileo to Newton, to Einstein; from an expla-
nation to a demonstration to a useful equation or two.
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
If longevity were any measure, then by far the most successful
theory of gravity is Aristotle’s explanation, or rather his two expla-
nations, of it. One of those ideas is based on the behaviour of the
Greeks’ four elements, earth, water, air, and fire (Aristotle himself
was to add spirit or aether, to make five elements). We all know
that stones sink in water; that air bubbles to the surface, and
flames leap upwards, because we have seen the evidence. Aris-
totle explained that it is the nature of the different elements to
seek their natural place: earth and water move down, air and fire
move up. In other words, there is something about the elements
that makes them move the way they do. But does calling it a
‘nature’ make it science?
Aristotle went on to make a rudimentary quantitative claim:
that the more of a particular nature an object contains – the more
earth or air it is made of, for instance – the faster or slower it will
fall. In other words, freefall velocity is proportional to mass. This
is an hypothesis that can be measured relatively easily, and would
be useful to know, if true. So does that make it science? Aristotle
never tested the idea.
6 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019
What Aristotle actually believed, to be more precise, is that
the terrestrial (non-spirit) elements move towards or away from
the centre of the universe, and the Earth, being mostly earth,
was therefore in the middle. Since it had already reached its des-
tination, Aristotle argued that the Earth wasn’t moving. His evi-
dence for this claim was that when you drop a stone it lands at
your feet. If the Earth were moving, it should land as far away
SPACE FOLDS AROUND EINSTEIN © KEN LAIDLAW 2019 PLEASE VISIT KENLAIDLAW.COM TO SEE MORE OF HIS ART
from you as the Earth had moved in the time it took to fall. His
explanation for why the Sun, Moon, planets and stars move round
the Earth is that they are set in a series of concentric spheres
that are spinning around an axis that goes through the Pole Star.
The spheres are made of aether, the fifth element, which unlike
the terrestrial elements moves in circles. This Aristotle explained
by claiming that there are only two types of basic motion, linear
and circular. All motion can be described as a combination of
those two; and since earth, water, air and fire all move in straight
lines, there must be an element that moves in circles.
The premises are a bit shaky, but if you accept them, it’s a log-
ically coherent explanation. Aristotle’s model was developed by
Ptolemy into a mathematical description that was reasonably
successful at predicting the positions of the heavenly bodies. So
it was supported by the available evidence too; and if the posi-
tion of the stars is important to you (say for navigation or for reli-
gious observance), it’s a useful model as well.
We now know that practically everything Aristotle said about
gravity is wrong, but his explanation taken as a whole made so
much sense that for two thousand years it resisted all chal-
lenges. In the century after Aristotle, Aristarchus of Samos
argued that the Sun rather than the Earth is the centre of the
universe; but this idea wasn’t fully revived until Copernicus in
the sixteenth century AD. When it did finally triumph, it also
undermined Aristotle’s explanation of gravity. If the Earth isn’t
at the centre, and is moving, then Aristotle’s explanation for
why stones always fall straight down, and indeed, why they fall
at all, must be wrong, and a new explanation is needed.
After Copernicus’s death, responsibility for the publication of
his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolu-
tions of the Celestial Spheres, 1543) was given to Andreas Osian-
der. Osiander added a Preface in which he argued that different
explanations can be supported by the same evidence. It doesn’t
matter to the calculations whether people choose the explana-
tion they find most plausible or the one they find most useful to
work with. As Osiander said, “If they provide a calculus consis-
tent with the observations, that alone is enough.” And although
Copernicus’s mathematics wasn’t as developed as Ptolemy’s,
bits of it were easier to work with. So some mathematicians and
astronomers adopted Copernicus’s model; not necessarily
because they believed the Sun-centred explanation, but because
it was useful.
 Science

August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 7

Science
Galileo (1564-1632)
A popular image of Pisa in the early seventeenth century, is of Galileo
Galilei at the top of the Leaning Tower, dropping different sized
cannonballs to prove they all fall at the same rate.
As it happens, very few historians think that Galileo actually
performed this experiment. Rather, Galileo was puzzled by a by Melissa Felder
paradoxical consequence of Aristotle’s belief that heavy things
fall faster than light ones. What would happen if a heavy thing
and a light thing were tied together? On the one hand, accord-
ing to Aristotle’s philosophy, the heavier weight will fall faster;
and since the lighter one will be holding the heavier up, the
string will be pulled tight, and overall the falling speed should
be something between the speed of the two weights separately.
On the other hand, since the two weights are joined, they and
the string are effectively one thing with a combined weight, so
the combined speed should be faster than the individual speeds.
Those two outcomes can’t both be right. Although Galileo may
or may not have dropped weights from the Tower, he did do,
and recorded, a lot of experiments rolling different weights
down slopes whose results flatly contradicted Aristotle’s claim
that more weight equals more speed.
Then there were the observations Galileo made with his
telescope. They didn’t rule out the possibility that the Earth
was at the centre, but they did clearly show that the universe
was not as Aristotle had described it. Galileo’s discovery of the
moons of Jupiter, for instance, demonstrated that not every-
thing revolves around the Earth. You could get round this by

SIMON & FINN © MELISSA FELDER 2019 PLEASE VISIT SIMONANDFINN.COM

positing that there are ethereal spheres centred on Jupiter. But
if you keep making up stuff to explain awkward new facts, are
you making claims about how the world actually works, or
about your explanation?

Newton (1643-1727)
On 28 November 1660 in London, a group of natural philoso-
phers announced the formation of a ‘College for the Promot-
ing of Physico-Mathematical Experimental Learning’. Hear-
ing of the plan, King Charles II gave his approval, and within
two years a charter was signed creating the Royal Society of
London. The motto of the Royal Society is Nullius in verba,
which can be translated as “Don’t take anyone’s word for it.”
In 1660, that ‘anyone’ still largely meant Aristotle.
In 1687 the Royal Society published the Philosophiæ Natu-
ralis Principia Mathematica (The Mathematical Principles of Natu-
ral Philosophy) by one of its fellows, Isaac Newton. In this book dence was needed to corroborate his law, as time progressed it
Newton described his law of universal gravitation. became clear that it was extremely successful in accounting for
The legend of the apple falling on Newton’s head has about the position of the planets, which at the time were known only
as much historical credibility as that of Galileo dropping can- far as Saturn. Almost a century later, in 1781, William Her-
nonballs off the Tower of Pisa. Nevertheless, something made schel recognised that a point of light which earlier astronomers
Newton realise that the reason stones fall to the ground is the had mistaken for a star was a planet, which he called Uranus,
same reason that moons go around planets and planets go round after the god of the heavens. However, by 1845 – by which
the Sun. In other words, there aren’t two forces at work here, time Uranus had completed most of an orbit – it was clear that
there’s only one, the force of gravity. Physicists like simplic- it was not behaving as Newton’s law demanded. Yet by then
ity, and they particularly like unifying forces. Newton demon- such was the confidence in Newton’s theory that mathemati-
strated that instead of it being the nature of earth to move cians in Paris and Cambridge began calculating the mass and
towards the centre and air to move away, every particle in the position of another body that could account for the anomalies.
universe is attracted to every other. And you can forget about Using the results of Urbain Le Verrier as his guide, Johann
ethereal spheres. Gottfried Galle identified the planet Neptune, which, like
Although Newton and others recognised that a lot of evi- Uranus, had previously been mistaken for a star. So Newton’s

8 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019


idea of a force of gravity explained the motion of the planets,
it was supported by a wealth of evidence, and it had been use-
fully applied in the discovery of a new planet.
But does saying “There is a force” tell us any more than saying
“There is a nature”? The ink was barely dry on the first edition
of the Principia before people started objecting that Newton
had introduced a force without a mechanism: for all the explana-
tory power of the idea of ‘the force of gravity’, there was (and
is) no explanation for how gravity works. Much of the challenge
came from followers of René Descartes (1596-1650). Descartes
had also been interested in the movement of the planets, but
his main concern was to give a explanation of the orbits. This
he did by invoking the idea of vortices, according to which space
is composed of infinitesimal ‘corpuscles’ that behave like a fluid.
These are swept around the Sun a little like water is dragged
around a plughole, and they in turn pull the planets along with
them. When in 1713 Newton published a second edition of the
Principia, he felt compelled to add an essay called ‘The General
Scholium’ in which he directly challenged the idea of vortices.
Newton pointed out that the orbits of comets are too eccentric
to fit the model, and that they cut across planetary vortices with
no apparent effect: “And therefore the celestial spaces, through
which the globes of the planets and comets move continually
in all directions freely and without any sensible diminution of
motion, are devoid of any corporeal fluid”.
Having dismissed Descartes’ explanation of how gravitational
attraction works, Newton included a passage known by a phrase
that occurs in it: hypotheses non fingo – ‘I make no hypotheses’.
He writes: “But hitherto I have not been able to discover the
cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I
make no hypotheses. For whatever is not deduced from the phe-
nomena, is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether
metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechan-
ical, have no place in experimental philosophy.” To Newton,
an explanation of how something works isn’t essential to sci-
ence; as long as the mathematical model gives us the power to
map, predict, and manipulate our environment, the job of
physics is done. As the passage concludes: “And to us it is
enough, that gravity does really exist, and act according to the
laws which we have explained, and abundantly serves to account
for all the motions of the celestial bodies, and of our sea.” The
explanation of why it works isn’t that important to science. As
Osiander had said, what matters is, can you use the theory?
Newton could just as easily have called the force of gravity
the ‘nature’ of gravity. The real difference between Aristotle’s
‘nature’ and Newton’s ‘force’ is not so much in the explanation:
it is in the quality and therefore usefulness of the mathematics,
and the abundance of evidence for it. However, if being right
were a criterion for science, then we’d have to throw Newton
out along with Aristotle.
Einstein (1879-1955)
Uranus was not the only planet that appeared to be breaking
Newton’s laws of motion. In fact Le Verrier, instrumental in
the discovery of Neptune, had been working on anomalies in
Mercury’s orbit since 1840. However, when his predictions were
tested by observations of the transit of Mercury across the face
of the Sun in 1843, they didn’t match. But with the success of
Science
Neptune behind him, Le Verrier returned to the problem, once
again calculating the mass and position of another planet near
Mercury that could explain Mercury’s erratic behaviour. So
confident was he that he even gave this planet a name – Vulcan.
Astronomers began looking for Vulcan. Some claimed to have
found it: Edmond Modeste Lescarbault was even awarded the
Legion D’Honneur for doing so. But on closer inspection all
the claims proved unfounded. There is no Planet Vulcan. The
Newtonian explanation was not supported by the evidence.
Something else was causing the discrepancy.
There is also another story, concerning how Einstein dis-
covered relativity. In 1865 the Royal Society published James
Clerk Maxwell’s A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field.
Maxwell’s elegant equations described electromagnetism as a
wave that travels through space at the speed of light. But waves,
as a rule, require a medium; after all, a wave on the ocean isn’t
a wave if there’s no ocean. Against the advice of Newton,
Maxwell was prepared to offer an explanation: that “light and
magnetism are affections of the same substance, and that light
is an electromagnetic disturbance propagated through the field
according to electromagnetic laws.” The hypothetical substance
through which light waves propagated – the explanation of the
observed behaviour – became known as the ‘luminiferous
aether’. Unlike the swirling corpuscular medium proposed by
Descartes, this was believed to be static, and something that the
Earth and all other celestial bodies were moving through: more
like a fog than a whirlpool.
Given that light’s speed through the aether was supposed to
be constant, and that the Earth was supposed to be moving through
the aether, the speed of light measured here on Earth should vary
according to whether it is moving in the same direction as the
Earth or perpendicular to it. In 1887 two American physicists,
Albert Michelson and Edward Morley, devised a sensitive experi-
ment to compare the time taken for light to travel two equal paths
at right angles to each other. From this they expected to be able
to prove the existence of the aether and calculate the speed and
direction of the Earth’s movement through it. To their surprise,
they found there was no difference in the time taken for the light
to travel the two paths. Either the Earth was stationary – and by
this time everyone knew from astronomy that it was not – or else
the speed of light for an observer on Earth is the same regardless
of the Earth’s motion. How could this be?
For a while, physicists scratched their heads and produced
explanations for how the luminiferous aether could produce
such baffling results. Then, in 1905 Albert Einstein put forward
his special theory of relativity. He jettisoned the luminiferous
aether in favour of empty space, and created a mathematical
description that accurately accounts for the evidence: that the
speed of light is the same for all observers, regardless of their
own velocity, because time passes more slowly for the observer
the faster they are travelling.
However, Einstein took a different view of space when he pub-
lished his general theory of relativity in 1915. General relativity
explains gravity by imagining that rather than being simply a
vacuum, space is a medium which is warped by the presence of
mass. Space is like a stretched rubber sheet – if you put an iron
ball on it, it will make a dip in the sheet, and any smaller balls
nearby will tend to roll down into the dip. Einstein offers no
August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 9
Science
hypothesis for how mass warps spacetime, any more than Newton
offered one about how gravity works. ‘Warped spacetime’ is an
explanation of gravity without an explanation. But again that does-
n’t matter in order for the theory to be useful. And as the evidence
soon showed, the equations Einstein deduced are more accurate
(for predicting planetary motion, say) than Newton’s laws.
Twentieth Century Philosophy of Science
In 1919 the British physicist Arthur Eddington led an expedi-
tion to the island of Principe off the West coast of Africa to
photograph a total eclipse of the Sun. The aim was to test gen-
eral relativity by measuring how much the light from stars was
bent by the Sun’s gravity (if space is warped by mass then light
will noticeably bend around large enough masses). The deflec-
tion was twice what Newtonian gravity could account for and
much closer to Einstein’s predictions. They made headlines
around the world and turned Einstein into the byword for sci-
entific genius that he remains to this day.
At the time a young Karl Popper (1902-1994) was attending
the University of Vienna. He was impressed by the fact that gen-
eral relativity made such definite predictions. It was a bold strat-
egy, because if the evidence didn’t support it, the theory would
be shown to be wrong. Popper decided that this was a defining
feature of science: a theory could only count as scientific if it
could in principle be shown to be wrong. It has to be falsifiable.
According to this view, Aristotle’s claim that freefall speed is
proportional to mass is scientific, because a simple experiment
can determine whether it is true or not. And Galileo had shown
it isn’t true. But according to Popper it’s still a scientific claim,
because being true isn’t a defining feature of a scientific theory.
Even as Popper was developing his theory of falsifiability, sci-
entists were already pointing out that actually, that’s not how sci-
entists work. Ludwik Fleck, a biologist, introduced the idea of a
‘thought collective’ – a group of scientists who share some common
theory and working practices, their scientific method, and who
collaborate to develop that research structure to its fullest poten-
tial. Michael Polanyi, a professor of chemistry, made a similar
point. Science, in his experience, was not a single objective method
that could simply be prescribed and followed; rather scientists put
into practice the philosophy and methods they have been taught
by other scientists. Essentially, once they have been initiated into
a thought collective, they contribute to that collective. The physi-
cist Max Planck, like Einstein, never fully accepted the interpre-
tations of quantum mechanics given by younger scientists; but he
observed that “a new scientific truth does not triumph by con-
vincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather
because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows
up that is familiar with it.” So a prominent biologist, chemist, and
physicist were all saying that in their professional experience, sci-
ence did not work as philosophers such as Popper thought it
should, and there isn’t one scientific method, there are many. And
in 1962 Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) published The Structure of Sci-
entific Revolutions, which made everyone pay attention to the grow-
ing conviction that science is not the pristine singular enterprise
philosophers had been trying to describe.
The structure of scientific progress referred to in Kuhn’s title
has three parts. There is a ‘pre-science’ period, when some fea-
10 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019
ture of the world has no scientific explanation. People speculate
and offer suggestions until one comes along in which a sufficient
number of scientists see enough potential to commit time and
resources to researching it. Rather than try to destroy the idea, as
Popper recommended, if experiments designed in terms of this
explanation produce results that match the theory, scientists col-
laborate to enhance the growing paradigm (the paradigm is the
overarching type of explanation being used). If the paradigm is
any good this can be a very productive period because it gives the
scientists a conceptual framework to explore that will raise ques-
tions that wouldn’t occur outside the paradigm. Such puzzle solv-
ing within a paradigm is what Kuhn called ‘normal science’. How-
ever, no matter how good a given paradigm is, we can never know
for sure that some new discovery will not undermine it. It hap-
pened to Aristotle’s paradigm of nature; it happened to Newton’s;
and no scientist can guarantee it won’t happen to our current
models, either. If, or more likely when it happens, at first there can
be some tinkering to protect the old paradigm, as Kuhn argued
from studying the history of science. But as the anomalies build
up and eventually plunge the extant paradigm into crisis, a new
paradigm will be required which can account for everything the
old paradigm could explain plus the stuff it couldn’t – just as gen-
eral relativity explains behaviour that Newtonian gravity can’t.
Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994) was one of four people person-
ally thanked by Kuhn in the Preface to The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions. Feyerabend had turned down an offer to be Popper’s
research assistant. Having started his academic career as a physi-
cist he was well qualified to make that judgement. As the history
of gravity shows, explanation, demonstration, and usefulness have
all played a critical role in science; and Feyerabend was concerned
that any reductive scientific method, such as Popper was advo-
cating, would have ruled out some part of that history. No one
likes being told what to think or do, and scientists are no excep-
tion. Rather, Feyerabend thought that the only prescription for
science that could accommodate every stumble and leap is
methodological anarchy, or as Feyerabend put it, anything goes.
He took the view that by far the most important criterion is that
a theory should be useful – it didn’t matter to who, or what for.
Feyerabend gave this insight: “Having listened to one of my anar-
chistic sermons, Professor Wigner exclaimed: ‘But surely, you
do not read all the manuscripts which people send you, you must
throw most of them into the wastepaper basket.’ I most certainly
do. ‘Anything goes’ does not mean that I shall read every single
paper that has been written – God forbid! –it means that I make
my selection in a highly individual and idiosyncratic way, partly
because I can’t be bothered to read what doesn’t interest me –
and my interests change from week to week and day to day –
partly because I am convinced that humanity and even science
will profit from everyone doing their own thing” (Against Method,
1975). Whatever anyone thinks should or shouldn’t qualify as
science, the fact is that science is done by people. Some of those
people are rationalists, some are empiricists, and some are prag-
matists; and no matter what rules are imposed, people break them.
© WILL BOUWMAN 2019
Will Bouwman is the author of Einstein on the Train and Other
Stories: How to Make Sense of the Big Bang, Quantum Mechanics
and Relativity.

Einstein vs Logical Positivism
Rossen Vassilev Jr. asks if modern physics has become too metaphysical.
ogical positivism was a philosophical movement of the
L 1920s and 30s which wanted to introduce the method-
ology of science and mathematics to philosophy. As
part of this ambition, the Vienna Circle (Wiener Kreis
in German) of logical positivists tried to purge philosophy of
metaphysics – by which they meant any speculation that could
not be tested using the methods of modern empirical science.
The members of the Vienna Circle, including its nominal leader
Moritz Schlick, found the speculative claims of traditional meta-
physics, especially those based on religion, to be false, uncertain,
or sterile. For Rudolph Carnap, another influential member of
the Circle, “the (pseudo)statements of metaphysics do not serve
for the description of states of affairs.” They are, like poetry and
music, “in the domain of art and not in the domain of theory”
Science
ILLUSTRATION © JAIME RAPOSO 2019. TO SEE MORE OF HIS ART, PLEASE VISIT JAIMERAPOSO.COM
(from ‘The End of Metaphysics?’ in Western Philosophy: An Anthol-
ogy, edited by John Cottingham). Carnap confidently proclaimed
that in the Circle’s new materialist philosophy of science, “a rad-
ical elimination of metaphysics is attained, which was not yet pos-
sible from the earlier anti-metaphysical standpoints.”
In fact, the logical positivists dismissed all non-scientific spec-
ulation altogether, not just in philosophy, insisting that all state-
ments and theories are literally meaningless unless they can be
logically verified or checked by experiment or observation. This
is the so-called verification principle. A.J. Ayer was not a member
of the Vienna Circle, but was powerfully influenced by it, and
sprang its ideas upon the English-speaking world with his book
Language, Truth and Logic. He argued that every verifiable propo-
sition is meaningful (though it may be either true or false), and
August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 11
Science
any unprovable claim, whether about science or metaphysics or
the existence of God, is meaningless. Claims about ethics, he
said, are also unverifiable so their only meaning can be as expres-
sions of our emotional attitudes. According to verificationism,
the meaning of any statement lies in its method of verification.
Soon, Karl Popper in his Logic of Scientific Discovery pointed
out a problem with verification: no number of observations that
agree with a theory can ever conclusively prove it true. A clas-
sic example is the claim that “all swans are white.” Not even a
large number of sightings of white swans will prove this true,
but even a single sighting of a non-white swan will disprove it
(‘falsify it’). He argued that a “theory which is not refutable by
any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a
virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice... the crite-
rion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or
refutability, or testability.” So for Popper falsifiability, not ver-
ifiability, is the test which distinguishes genuine science from
what Popper called ‘pseudo-science’ – or ‘metaphysics’.
In the second of four BBC interviews with Bryan Magee
about logical positivism and its legacy, A.J. Ayer stressed that
the Vienna Circle’s members “saw Einstein’s work on relativ-
ity and also the new quantum theory as a vindication of their
approach.” It does seem that the replacement of Newtonian
physics by Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity had a
revolutionary impact on logical positivism. As John Earman
writes, “a brief examination of the actual history of logical pos-
itivism reveals that one of its most fundamental inspirations is
precisely this Einsteinian revolution. The early writings of the
logical positivists – of Schlick, Reichenbach, and Carnap, in
particular – all focus on the theory of relativity, a theory whose
revolutionary impact is explicitly recognized in the course of a
polemic against their philosophical predecessors.” (Inference,
Explanation and Other Frustrations, p.85, 1992)
But does the revolution in physics that Einstein began in 1905
really vindicate the principles of logical positivism? My con-
tention is that it contradicts the Vienna Circle’s philosophy, par-
ticularly the Circle’s near fanatical commitment to the empiri-
cist methodology of David Hume, Ernst Mach and Bertrand
Russell, as well as Moritz Schlick’s principle of verifiability.
Specifically, although many of the ground-breaking and highly
exotic ideas coined by Einstein’s scientific successors – such as
white holes, wormholes, dark matter, dark energy, subatomic
strings, parallel universes, hidden dimensions of spacetime, and
gravitational waves – may appear in the mathematical equations
and calculations of theoretical physicists, in most cases no evi-
dence has yet been found in the observable Universe to confirm
their existence.
Metaphysical Philosophy or Science Fiction?
According to renowned physicist Lee Smolin, co-founder of
Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, this cur-
rent move of physics away from Vienna Circle-style empiricism
is due to “the triumph of a particular way of doing science that
came to dominate physics in the 1940s. This style... favors vir-
tuosity in calculating over reflection on hard conceptual prob-
lems” (The Trouble with Physics, 2006, pp.xxii). Mirroring the
logical positivists’ devotion to empiricism, Smolin is highly
skeptical of this ‘particular way of doing science’. It has led to
12 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019
what he calls ‘the current crisis’ in fundamental physics:
“New theories have been posited and explored, some in great detail,
but none has been confirmed experimentally. And here is the crux
of the problem: In science, for a theory to be believed, it must make
a new prediction – different from those made by previous theories –
for an experiment not yet done. For the experiment to be meaning-
ful, we must be able to get an answer that disagrees with that pre-
diction. When this is the case, we say that a theory is falsifiable – vul-
nerable to being shown false. The theory also has to be confirmable;
it must be possible to verify a new prediction that only this theory
makes. Only when a theory has been tested and the results agree with
the theory do we advance the theory to the ranks of true theories”
(The Trouble with Physics p.xiii).
In the light of this, many of the theories embraced by theo-
retical physicists today look like what Smolin calls ‘metaphysi-
cal fantasies’. One of the most prominent is the idea of multiple
universes, also known as the ‘many-worlds hypothesis’ or ‘mul-
tiverse’ theory. Different versions of it have been promoted as
an answer to puzzles in many branches of physics; it was the sub-
ject of an entire issue of New Scientist magazine in 2011, and
among its many scientific supporters was the late Stephen Hawk-
ing, who worked on it in his last published paper. But in spite of
all this, the multiverse hypothesis remains a purely speculative
theory in the sense of not being checkable by direct observation.
In fact it has no concrete empirical evidence to back it up. It
cannot be proven using Schlick’s principle of verifiability; nor
can it be falsified empirically in the way that Karl Popper believed
any truly scientific theory should be. As a mere artifact of theo-
retical speculation and/or of mathematical models, it is more
philosophy and metaphysics than testable empirical science. It
borders on science fiction.
Another dubious theory gained popularity as a result of prob-
lems surrounding the Big Bang theory, concerning the rela-
tively even distribution of matter observed throughout the vis-
ible Universe. This is something one would hardly expect to
result from a gigantic explosion of energy concentrated into a
point far smaller than an atom some 13.8 billion years ago. But
our earliest radioastronomical ‘baby picture’ of how the Uni-
verse looked 380,000 years or so after the Big Bang, shows an
even distribution of matter in every direction. To explain this
anomaly, Alan Guth and other cosmologists proposed the so-
called ‘inflation’ theory, according to which the newly created
Universe initially expanded at a rate much faster even than the
speed of light for a fraction of a second just after the Big Bang.
But this ad hoc adjustment or ‘theoretical crutch’ (to use Thomas
Kuhn’s apt phrase) fails to explain the even distribution of matter
throughout the Universe, because the debris of a Big Bang-like
explosion should still be rather unevenly and chaotically spread
even if the Universe initially grew incredibly fast. Additionally,
the new theory created other complications such as eleven
dimensions of spacetime, countless Big Bangs and, again, the
existence of numerous copies of each of us inhabiting multiple
parallel universes. Smolin remarks that, “The theory of infla-
tion made predictions that seemed dubious” (p.xi), and com-
plained that this is hardly the stuff of which Popperian science
is made:

“This is a sleight of hand by which they hope to convert an explana-
tory failure into an explanatory success. If we don’t understand... our
universe, just presume our universe is a member of an infinite and
unobservable ensemble of universes.... There is so much wrong with
this as a scientific hypothesis… it is hard to see how it could make
any falsifiable predictions for doable experiments.”
(quoted by John Horgan in Scientific American, January 4, 2015).
Moreover, consider what is perhaps the most popular theory
among theoretical physicists today: string theory. According to
Smolin, string theory “proposes that all the elementary parti-
cles arise from the vibrations of a single entity – a string” which
is so infinitesimal that it is invisible even to the super-sophisti-
cated instruments of modern science. But Smolin repudiates
the scientific status of string theory because it “makes no new
predictions that are testable by current – or even currently con-
ceivable – experiments.... Thus, no matter what the experiments
show, string theory cannot be disproved. But the reverse also
holds: no experiment will ever be able to prove it true” (The
Trouble with Physics, p.xiv). Smolin also sees other equally fatal
flaws in string theory. “Part of the reason string theory makes
no new predictions is that it appears to come in an infinite
number of versions… every single one disagrees with the pre-
sent experimental data” (Ibid). He goes on to demystify the meta-
physical claims of string theory despite its clearly dominant
position in the world of physics today. “String theory... posits
that the world is fundamentally different from the world we
know. If string theory is right, the world has more dimensions
and many more particles and forces than we have so far observed.
Many string theorists talk and write as if the existence of these
extra dimensions and particles were an assured fact, one that no
good scientist can doubt. More than once, a string theorist has
said to me something like ‘But do you mean you think it’s pos-
sible that there are not extra dimensions?’ In fact, neither theory
nor experiment offers any evidence at all that extra dimensions
exist.” (p.xvi)
Fundamental physics has been taken as the model for how
all other sciences should develop. For dedicated empiricists like
Smolin, it’s a tragedy that “despite our best efforts, what we
know for certain about [fundamental physical] laws is no more
than what we knew back in the 1970s” (p.viii). He blames this
on the ‘arrogance’ of many of the string theorists. (p.269)
It Is ‘All In The Math’?
During the total solar eclipse in the fall of 1919, British astro-
physicists observed evidence that the Sun’s gravity bends the path
of the light from other stars, confirming a key prediction of Ein-
stein’s general theory of relativity. An insightful article by Richard
Panek in the science magazine Discover in March 2008 described
how Einstein interrupted a student who was trying to congratu-
late him for this scientific success, saying “But I knew the theory
is correct.” But what, the student asked, if the observations had
contradicted his calculations? Einstein replied, “Then I would
have been sorry for the dear Lord – the theory is correct.” It’s a
smug rejection of the positivist principle of empirical verifiabil-
ity. Einstein declared years later that “Our experience hitherto jus-
tifies us in believing that nature is the realization of the simplest
conceivable mathematical ideas. I am convinced that we can dis-
Science
cover by means of purely mathematical constructions the con-
cepts and the laws connecting them with each other.” Panek nicely
sums up the momentous implications of the leap from the more
traditional method of empirical observation to Einstein’s faith in
thought experiments and the ‘mathematical imagination’. “For
thousands of years, researchers had studied the behavior of the
heavens and sought to capture it in mathematical terms. Einstein
reversed the challenge: he sought truth in equations and then
trusted that studies of the heavens would back him up. Almost
all of modern cosmology and theoretical physics follows from
that leap of faith – or leap, perhaps, of reason.”
Smolin is not buying any such ‘leap of reason’ – unless it’s
backed up by solid empirical evidence: by observations and
experiments that prove or disprove any proposed hypothesis in
strict compliance with both the Vienna Circle’s philosophy of
science and Popper’s insights. He writes, “once you reason like
this, you lose the ability to subject your theory to the kind of
test that the history of science shows over and over again is
required to winnow correct theories from beautiful but wrong
ones. To do this, a theory must make specific and precise pre-
dictions that can either be confirmed or refuted. If there is a
high risk of disconfirmation, then confirmation counts for a lot.
If there is no risk of either, then there is no way to continue to
do science” (The Trouble with Physics, p.169).
Non-Positivist Conclusions
So is the theoretical physics embraced by today’s heirs to Ein-
stein testable empirical science, metaphysical philosophy, or sci-
ence fiction? Einstein’s heirs seem to have forgotten Einstein’s
words of caution in 1933, that “Experience remains, of course,
the sole criterion of the physical utility of a mathematical con-
struction.” Lee Smolin adds his own warning: “Mathematics is
our most useful tool, but the idea that it should be prophetic has
done a lot of harm.” (Scientific American, January 4, 2015)
Panek’s Discover article concludes by identifying the enor-
mous challenges faced by the troubled field of cosmology, which
is now driven more by mathematics-based theory and ‘mathe-
matical beauty’ than by hard-nosed observation-based empiri-
cism. “These latest concepts all exist beautifully in the mathe-
matics, but so far observers have identified no sign of them in
the real world... How to move beyond slavish devotion to expe-
rience may have been Einstein’s greatest gift to the 20th cen-
tury. How to bring mathematical imagination back down to earth
may rate as his greatest challenge to the 21st.” If this challenge
is not faced, then future achievements in fundamental physics –
a field which is clearly “suffering from a surfeit of imagination
and a deficit of data” (Horgan) – may move ever further from
observation and testable prediction into ever more fanciful
realms of metaphysical speculation. After all, what is one to think
when America’s best-known living cosmologist, Dr Neil
deGrasse Tyson, following the philosopher Nick Bostrom, says
that the likelihood of the Universe being a digital simulation
“may be very high... And if that’s the case, it is easy for me to
imagine that everything in our lives is just the creation of some
other entity for their entertainment.” Indeed, is this ‘simulation
hypothesis’ itself a scientific theory, or pure science fiction?
© ROSSEN VASSILEV JR. 2019
Rossen Vassilev is studying at Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio.
August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 13
Science
Science & Phenomenology
Kalina Moskaluk tells us how an idea outside of her theoretical background
destroyed her research project and her faith in ‘simple’ phenomenology.
hat would come to mind if I asked you about
W phenomenology, the systematic study of human
experience? If you know something about it,
you might imagine its founding father, Edmund
Husserl (1859-1938) meditating on his warm cup of fragrant
black coffee. If you’re interested in psychology, maybe you’d
think about ‘introspection’.
For an uninvolved observer, phenomenological investigation
may look just like introspection, which it is often mistaken for.
There are some similarities – the examiner and the person being
examined are the same individual, and the experiment takes place
inside the person’s mind. However, unlike introspection, phe-
nomenology does not simply consist of an unbound stream of
consciousness. It does not deal with what we think or feel about
both our experiences or the objects that the experiences are about
(we’re supposed to put this ‘in brackets’ when we practice phe-
nomenology). It is not even about the things the experience is
about. It is about the nature of the experience itself.
Phenomenology originally dealt with questions like ‘What
makes human experience possible?’ or ‘How do we perceive
different parts and wholes of the world that surrounds us?’ If
we want to practice phenomenology, we should follow these
four steps that constitute the phenomenological method:
1. We should bracket what we think we know about the experience;
2. Reflect upon how the world manifests itself to us;
3. Produce a public description of the experience – speak it or
write it down; and
4. Do this repeatedly in order to find out which language and
categories seem suitable for describing the way we experience.
Opposing Mentalities
Although the subject of phenomenology may seem vague, mys-
terious, and even esoteric to some, there have been numerous
cases where the methods of phenomenology were applied in
scientific studies of mind.
I stumbled upon phenomenology and the ways it can be
applied to cognitive science or cognitive semiotics (the inter-
disciplinary study of meaning-making, which is said to be phe-
nomenology-inspired), and my professor at Lund University,
Jordan Zlatev, gave me the task of trying to further develop the
method of phenomenology. I must confess that I miserably
failed to do so; but I recognized some interesting things that
remained unnoticed throughout a twenty-year-long debate
involving the two most important phenomenology-related
methodologies in neurological research.
Neurophenomenology is the first of them. It was introduced by
Francisco Varela in 1996 and promoted by him and by Evan
Thompson as a solution to the hard problem of consciousness
– the problem of how humans (and other conscious organisms)
14 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019
have experiences, thoughts, and feelings as a result of brain activ-
ity. Neurophenomenology is said by its practitioners to be able
to address this problem by combining the subject’s own phe-
nomenological investigation with simultaneous neuro-imaging
data. The goal of neurophenomenological experiments is to pro-
vide a two-fold description of what is going on in one’s mind –
from the subject’s own point of view and from the perspective
of ‘objective’ neuro-images of their brain activity obtained using
fMRI scans or EEG monitoring. The most important point here
is that experience cannot be reduced to what is happening on
the biological level in the brain, which means that adding the
first-person description of experience to the brain scan data
allows us to formulate a more reliable answer to the question
‘What’s going on in thinking?’
Heterophenomenology, on the other hand, is an approach advo-
cated by Daniel Dennett, and reflects his naturalistic and reduc-
tionist views. Even though it also utilizes first-person data, it has a
radically different method and goals from neurophenomenology.
Dennett allows participants to express freely what it is like to be
them or to be experiencing; but he treats their reports as fictions
insofar as what they say is not what experimenters see through the
‘objective’ measurement of participants’ brain states with scien-
tific instruments. (See Dennett’s paper ‘Shall we tango? No, but
thanks for asking’, Journal of Consciousness Studies 18(5–6), 2011).
Neurophenomenology-oriented experimenters treat the partici-
pants’ first-person reports as pieces of the puzzle of consciousness,
while for heterophenomenology-oriented experimenters, first-
person reports are no different from any other kinds of raw data:
that is, prone to errors and useless as long as not interpreted.
There are several differences between Daniel Dennett’s and
Evan Thompson’s approaches, but the ones most often empha-
sized involve what they say about their methodologies rather than
what the methodologies actually are. For example, they disagree
on whether we have direct access to our experience, or whether
this is always mediated by our beliefs. In neurophenomenology,
the first-person reports are acknowledged as expressions of the
experiences themselves, and the aim is to “free experience from
its status of a habitual belief” (‘Neurophenomenology: A method-
ological remedy for the hard problem’, Francisco Varela, JCS 3(4),
1996). However, from Dennett’s heterophenomenological per-
spective, the first-person reports are always expressions of beliefs
about the experiences rather than about the experiences themselves.
But are the theoretical differences so important for conduct-
ing research? Some scientists would answer “No.” Gualtiero Pic-
cinini is another scholar trying to mend the gap between philos-
ophy and neuroscience. He points out that for the development
of a methodology it isn’t particularly important what the thing
is that’s being measured (raw experiences compared to beliefs
about experience, say) so long as the measurement is sound. At
the same time he argues against heterophenomenology’s lack of

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HUSSERL IMAGE © BOFY 2019
Husserl and his coffee
trust in the reliability of descriptions of experience (‘How to
improve on heterophenomenology’, JCS 17(3–4), 2010).
A Conceptual Spanner in the Mental Cogs
Personally, the problem I found the most striking (and I was
shocked that it went so long unnoticed) was that practicing phe-
nomenology – the systematic study of human experience –
changes the experience it’s supposed to reliably explore!
This is almost explicitly said by Evan Thompson when he crit-
icizes Dennett’s heterophenomenology for having nothing to do
with the original idea of phenomenology. Thompson writes that
heterophenomenology “has had nothing to say about the pro-
posal to use first-person methods of training attention and aware-
ness in order to sensitize individuals to their experience in ways
enabling them to describe it more precisely” (‘Reply to Com-
mentaries’, JCS, 18(5-6), 2011). A similarity struck me between
this proposed ‘awareness training’ to the training in mindfulness
that has gained a lot of attention in different areas of our culture
over the past few years. However, while for phenomenology this
training is supposed to allow the production of a standardized
and reliable description of the experience as it is experienced,
mindfulness training is supposed to be a tool for change! On
reflection, it seemed reasonable to think that being aware of or
paying close attention to phenomena in our experience makes us
experience them in a different way than we would without that
attentiveness. Does this mean, in a paradoxical, Catch-22 manner,
that a systematic first-person exploration of experience destroys
the picture it’s supposed to grasp? Yes, probably. This is a fun-
damental difficulty for phenomenology.
Science
To indicate how this problem might affect experimental
results, I would like to share an example from the research pro-
ject my team and I designed (but never actually conducted, for
reasons that will become clear). We created two hypothetical
groups: a neurophenomenological one and a heterophenomeno-
logical one. The neurophenomenological group was to be trained
in categorizing and reporting relevant experience before per-
forming a task and reporting their experience, while the het-
erophenomenological one was not. Instead, the heterophe-
nomenological group would be allowed to describe the experi-
ence without any training, or indeed, constraints. The task in the
experiment would be for each participant to keep one hand under
a stream of water with varying temperature and report any tem-
perature changes. But the color of lights fixed to the tap would
also change. We hypothesized that the light color shifting from
red to blue could trick the heterophenomenological group into
believing that the temperature changed, which, we thought, might
make their reports less reliable. We initially considered that the
neurophenomenologically trained group, by contrast, might be
better at reporting the objective, measureable temperature of the
water – so, better at reporting their experience. But after we
thought about it some more, we rejected this. In fact, we con-
cluded that it would be silly to think that an experiment like this
could tell us anything about which method provides a better
insight into one’s subjective experience. First, since those in one
group would be mindful in a trained manner about their experi-
ences, and those from the other would not, the experiences would
already be different. This would make their descriptions unhelp-
ful for examining which group described their experience more
reliably, as we could not compare like for like. Second, experi-
ence is not created by only one, separate, measureable aspect of
the world. So for example, if the light changed from red to blue
but the water temperature stayed the same, a report that would
reliably reflect the participant’s perspective might be “I know
that what has changed was not the water temperature, but the
light color, yet I still feel that the water is cooler now” rather than
simply “The temperature hasn’t changed”. The complexity of
both human experience and human language, even under con-
trolled conditions, would make it extremely difficult to judge
whether a description was good or not.
This brings us back to attempts to compare first-person
descriptions of experience with more objectively measureable
parameters such as changes in brain activity. To subscribe either
to a reductionist perspective from which a simple brain scan
could tell us everything we need to know about subjective expe-
rience, or to the unqualified phenomenological claim that “con-
scious experience needs to be explored from within the first-
person perspective” (Thompson in ‘Reply to Commentaries’),
is to oversimplify the situation so much as to misrepresent it.
Is experience itself impossible to explore reliably, then? Pos-
sibly not. But for now I would hypothesize that experience is
described best when it is lived, and our experience in a lab dif-
fers significantly from our experience in real life. So go out and
play some phenomenology! Just remember that experiences in
the phenomenological mirror may be different than they appear.
© KALINA MOSKALUK 2019
Kalina Moskaluk is doing a Master’s in Language and Linguistics,
specialising in Cognitive Semiotics, at Lund University, Sweden.
August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 15
 Science
IMAGE © VENANTIUS J PINTO 2019. TO SEE MORE ART, PLEASE VISIT FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/VENANTIUS/ALBUMS
DNA & The Identity Crisis
Raymond Keogh has a science-based take on personal identity.
s it possible to bring science into philosophy? There is one
I outstanding example in which the answer is without doubt
yes. It relates to notions of personal identity.
When philosophers grapple with the issue of what consti-
tutes personal identity that endures through time they gener-
ally rely on description rather than definition. In fact, the
humanities have failed to define ‘identity’ concisely. The Oxford
English Dictionary defines ‘identity’ to mean: “The sameness of
a person or thing at all times or in all circumstances; the con-
dition or fact that a person or thing is itself and not something
else.” Unfortunately, philosophy has been dogged by its inabil-
ity to explain what can be meant by ‘sameness’ for something
that changes. As a result, it has not been possible to apply the
dictionary definition.
One of the problems with the concept of identity can be
traced to the age-old question about the conditions under which
something persists as the same object through time. But this
idea contains the key to understanding how science can con-
tribute to solving the dilemma. The paradox is succinctly illus-
trated in the famous Ship of Theseus thought experiment.
Greek hero Theseus sails home to Athens and his ship is put
16 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019
on permanent public display. However, the timber eventually
begins to rot and over the years carpenters replace planks one
by one. At what point does the ship cease to be the original ship?
Finally all the old parts of the original ship have been replaced
by new parts. If every plank, rib, and panel, along with the nails
that held them together, has now been replaced, how can it be
the same ship? Surely it is only a replica?
We know that the constituent cells of our bodies are simi-
larly continually dying and being replaced. We change in many
other ways too; what makes us the same person as we move
through time? In the absence of an adequate or persuasive
answer, many philosophers have denied that we have an
unchanging essence that makes us who we are.
Because of this inability to define ‘identity’ in philosophy, the
concept has become something of a hydra (to borrow from Greek
legend again!). In their article ‘Beyond “Identity”’ in Theory and
Society Vol. 29 (2000), Professor of Sociology Rogers Brubaker
and historian Frederick Cooper acknowledge that the word can
be understood in many ways and in many different forms,
depending on “the context of its use and the theoretical tradi-
tion from which the use in question derives.” Furthermore, these

usages “are not simply heterogeneous; they point in sharply dif-
fering directions.” We’re talking chaos and confusion here.
Personal Identity
Until recently science was not well placed to make a positive
contribution to the debate. But in April 2003 the Human
Genome Project for the first time gave us the ability to read
humanity’s complete genetic blueprint.
Every individual has a unique genetic makeup, their own dis-
tinct form of the human genome. (Although there is some debate
on the issue, it’s possible that even identical twins do not have
exactly the same DNA.) Furthermore, our basic DNA sequences
remain unchanged throughout all stages of our growth, devel-
opment, and degeneration. The individual’s DNA sequences
are stable despite the replacement of chemical elements. They
persist irrespective of damage to DNA due to random accidents.
The sequences do not depend on cognitive abilities or con-
sciousness. The Alzheimer’s sufferer who has lost most of her
memory has the same genetic base as she had as an infant with-
out self-awareness, or as an adult during the peak of a success-
ful career. Our DNA remains the same from the first instant of
an individual’s existence to his or her last breath.
In simple terms, our DNA sequences are unique, measurable,
and constitute an objective description or plan of an individual’s
deep-seated physical makeup. As such, personal identity as
defined by the dictionary – ‘the sameness of the person at all
times or in all circumstances; the condition or fact that the person
is itself and not something else’ – is fully revealed through our
DNA patterns: we can now say how and why we are one and the
same being throughout our entire lives. By using DNA, it is no
longer problematic to ground persistence of personal identity
in the continuous existence of our changing bodies, and the dif-
ficulty in verifying whether one body at one time is the same
body at another time is overcome by looking at the genome. The
permanence of the abiding substance, the underlying genomic
pattern, can be empirically verified even as all else changes over
time. So through our understanding of human DNA it’s possi-
ble to transfer our ideas of personal identity from subjective
notions based on descriptions in the humanities, to an objective
concept based on science. Doing so is a major paradigm shift.
Group Identity
Such a shift would mean for a start that personal identity is the
product of sexual reproduction that generates new and unique
DNA sequences. In other words, the identity of the individual
emerges from a male and female who have in turn originated
from the organic substratum of the human species.
In biological terms, a species is generally defined as a group
of organisms capable of successfully exchanging genes, or in
other words, capable of interbreeding to produce fertile off-
spring. Ability to reproduce with our own kind is, therefore,
the essential constant that distinguishes us as human. This
means that communal identity becomes manifest through the
‘trinitarian’ act of reproduction, in which two personal identi-
ties of the opposite sex give rise to a new personal identity. As
such, human reproduction defines the identity of the group. So
DNA operating through human reproduction is at one and the
same time the factor that defines our personal identity and gives
Science
rise to our communal identity. It is the organic link between
both: the common bond without which neither exists.
So we now have a succinct, measurable, and objective way to
define personal identity and communal identity, or both together.
Furthermore, the definitions apply across all disciplines.
Some Implications
If ‘identity’ is confined rigorously to its objective definitions, it
unburdens philosophy and the social sciences of the need to,
somehow identify it out of an understanding of cognitive pro-
cesses such as continued memory, sense of being, and/or human
behaviour. The implications are overwhelmingly positive.
Indeed, the consequences of our ability to define identity in
objective terms are enormous. Our genes don’t correlate well
with our commonly used tools of human classification, such as
race, ethnicity, culture or nation. Indeed, the disassociation
between our basic underlying genetic structures and our super-
ficial (and often incorrect) understanding of human differences,
questions the entire bag of instruments we use to classify human-
ity. The ‘sameness’ that defines the human species – our ability
to interbreed – is and was identical across every classification
of people that can be devised; and every subset of humanity is
permeable to the ‘other’ through interbreeding. Therefore unity
within the human family based on our ability to intermix resists
the notion of fundamental divisions.
If our systems of classification are suspect, then it’s impera-
tive to modify them in favour of classifying humanity through
the one aspect that provides the most fundamental understand-
ing of who we are: namely, our DNA. Human genetics is the
new classifier, and group differences are one of grade rather
than essence. Although sometimes helpful in the study of human
behaviour, they do not serve to constitute separate ‘identities’.
In ‘Beyond “Identity” ’, Brubaker and Cooper are not per-
suaded that the word ‘identity’ is indispensable in its current
usage. They think it is overused anyway, remarking that “The
‘identity’ crisis – a crisis of overproduction and consequent deval-
uation of meaning – shows no signs of abating.” So they favour
replacing the term ‘identity’ by unbundling “the thick tangle of
meanings that have accumulated around the term… and to parcel
out the work to a number of less congested terms.” ‘Identity’ is
to be relegated to the trash can at the precise moment that sci-
ence comes to its rescue and gives it back its meaning!
Scholars are now faced with the challenge of either main-
taining an unworkable approach to identity, or else decoupling
the term from anything that does not relate to its scientific def-
initions at the personal and communal levels.
The main obstacle to the acceptance of this scenario may be
reluctance on the part of the academic world to undertake a
major shift in direction. But a collective attitude of this sort would
be preposterous. In the interest of enhancing human knowledge,
the academic world must continually and critically review its
methods and approaches. But perhaps there is a feeling that the
whole process has gone too far to execute the radical reforms in
thinking that are required to solve the human identity crisis.
© RAYMOND M. KEOGH 2019
Raymond M. Keogh, director of Our Own Identity, is a retired scientist
who specialised in tropical hardwood silviculture for over thirty years.
He recently completed a book on the new definition of identity.
August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 17
Science
Flora or Mona Lisa?
Predrag Slijepcevic asks if organisms are better seen as singular or as composites.

he boundaries between the parts flowers. Yet in spite of his unusual artistic which has undergone a dra-

T and the whole are almost non-exis-

tent on the canvases of the Renais-
sance painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo
(1527-1593). Arcimboldo composed portraits
of people out of pieces of fruit, sea animals, or
vision, Flora may be a more authentic portrait
than the Mona Lisa.
Here’s how I see it.
Arcimboldo’s vision is a good analogy for
understanding the concept of the organism,
matic transformation in recent
decades. Symbiotic biology
understands organisms in a
similar way to Arcimboldo’s
paintings. Absolute individu-
als do not exist.
The Greek word symbiosis
means ‘living together’. Sym-
biotic biology is concerned
with the construction of bio-
logical systems through merg-
ers. On this understanding,
organisms are biological sys-
tems formed by the merger of
simpler organisms into more
complex ones. Each complex
organism is seen as a symbiotic
collective rather than an inde-
pendent individual. Group
selection principles apply,
such that natural selection
selects the collectives which
together form fit organisms.
By contrast, for earlier main-
stream biology, natural selec-
tion has been about the selec-
tion of individual organisms.
This approach treated organ-
isms as undisputed individuals,
and did not recognize the role
of collectives in the formation
or behaviour. It sees group
selection as a problematic con-
cept. From the perspective of
such mainstream biology, Lisa
Gherardini, the model for the
Mona Lisa, is one organism.
We are blind to the compo-
nents, the hierarchies, the
populations, that make up the
ecological collective of her
body. But Flora is more
authentic than Mona Lisa
because Arcimboldo’s coun-
terintuitive vision depicts the
wholes as composites. Life is a
set of transitional forms, or we
might even say an organic
composite form that is con-

18 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019

 Science
stantly changing. Evolution is insects, plants, people... In this way, some social present in our digestive tract and on our skin.
the process of the change of communities turned into what have been called For symbiotic biology, life is a constantly
the composites. ‘superorganisms’. The whole biosphere is a col- changing and transitional complex form, and
How would this work? lage of diverse ecosystems: just like Arcim- all organisms except the most basic microbes
Well, life began with microbes boldo’s group portraits. are types of chimeras – composite ecological
almost four billion years ago. At the heart of symbiotic biology is the prin- systems thrown out into the biosphere by the
Microbes built a giant system, ciple of biological coexistence. Whether we like thermodynamic storm of life, in the same sort
a living planetary network of it or not, we are microbial partners. Our bodies of way that Arcimboldo painted human faces
microbes, that altered plane- are ecological systems that comprise forty tril- by merging seemingly incompatible images
tary chemistry, for instance by lion cells, each one containing tens, hundreds, projected by the storm of his artistic mind onto
oxygenating the atmosphere. or even thousands of integrated bacteria-mito- his canvases.
Microbes also have their own chondria; and biologists estimate between forty © DR PREDRAG SLIJEPCEVIC 2019
precursor of biological com- and four hundred trillion more microbes which Predrag Slijepcevic is a Senior Lecturer in Biology
munication. Eshel Ben-Jakob, are not strictly speaking part of our bodies are at Brunel University, London.
physicist and microbiologist,
was among the first to use the
term ‘bacterial linguistics’ in
such a context.
At least one billion years
ago, the microbial planetary
network produced the first
symbiotic organisms, such as
amoeba: eukaryotic cells,
which are cells with a nucleus.
These types of cells, which
include most of the cells in
human bodies, are formed
from the combination of two
types of microbes – bacteria
and archea – when one type of
cell swallowed the other but
the other stayed alive inside it.
Amoeba and her relatives,
known as the protists, playing
games with bacteria, learned
the crafts of construction with
and communication amongst
many cells. This merging of
protist cells gradually pro-
duced multi-celled organisms
from once free-living individ-
ual cells. Microbes immedi-
ately joined in to help gener-
ate super-symbiotic collec-
tives called holobionts, which
means a complex individual
organism living with all its
individual bacteria etc. All the
organisms we see around us -
humans, dogs, trees, fish - are
holobionts. There are no
plants or animals on the planet
without associated micro-
biota. If you removed
microbes from the biosphere
it would collapse. Holobionts
themselves formed social
communities – societies of

August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 19

 Science
PORTRAIT © GUIDO CASTAGNOLI
John
Dupré
is Professor of
Philosophy of Science at
the University of Exeter
and Director of Egenis,
the Centre for the Study
of Life Sciences. He was
recently elected
President of the
Philosophy of Science
Association.
Edit Talpsepp-Randla
talks to him about the
philosophy of biology.
20 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019
Hello Professor. There have been many dis-
cussions about what the contribution of phi-
losophy of science is to science itself. Some
famous scientists have even claimed that
philosophy has made no contribution to sci-
ence. I am interested in your strategy and
arguments on this matter.
I suppose that the most famous attacks
on philosophy have come from physi-
cists, and I’ll leave the philosophers of
physics to respond to those. As the
philosopher Thomas Kuhn taught us –
rightly, I think – a great many scientists
do relatively routine work in a well-
established paradigm, and have no
strong interest in foundational issues in
general, or philosophy in particular.
Biologists too, I think, are mostly indif-
ferent to philosophy. But a small yet
influential minority have thought that
philosophy of biology was important for
their science. Notable among these, and
very important to the growth of the
field, have been the formidable figures
of Ernst Mayr and Richard Lewontin.
Many of the leading philosophers of
biology in the 70s and 80s (though not
myself) spent time in Lewontin’s labora-
tory. Other prominent biologists who
have been interested in philosophical
issues and in interacting with philoso-
phers include Denis Noble, Scott
Gilbert and Ford Doolittle.
At this stage in my career I find the
importance of biology for philosophy
very obvious. Life generally, and human
life in particular, are surely central top-
ics of philosophical interest that can also
only benefit from attention to the scien-
tific knowledge that has been gained
about them. What philosophers can
contribute to biology is perhaps not so
obvious; perhaps most biologists can do
their work very well without addressing
many philosophical questions.
One answer that resonates with my
own experience is that whereas scientists
are professionally required to look
deeply into very specific questions,
philosophers have the privilege of rang-
ing over a much wider, if shallower, ter-
rain. This sometimes enables them to
see points where distinct scientific pro-
jects need to be brought into closer con-
tact with one another. I see a good deal
of my own work in this way. I was
recently involved in organising a very
exciting joint meeting of the Royal Soci-
ety and the British Academy, the leading
UK academies for the natural sciences
and the social sciences and humanities
respectively, on the state of evolutionary
theory in the light of recent research in
areas such as niche construction, epige-
netics, and symbiosis. Among other
things, this drew attention, I hope, to the
value of bringing together narrow and
deep expertise in the sciences with
wider, more synoptic perspectives from
the humanities. Or in a critical vein, I
have argued that evolutionary psycholo-
gists have failed to keep up with devel-
opments in evolutionary theory that
make much of what they say highly
problematic.
I like to think that there’s no sharp border-
line between a theoretical scientific discipline
and the philosophy of that discipline; for
instance philosophy of physics and theoretical
physics. Many ‘paradigm-shifting’ scientific
discoveries involve changing some very basic
ways we see important aspects of the world,
so perhaps these discoveries should be consid-
ered ‘metaphysical’ as well as ‘scientific’.
What is your stance on this?
I certainly agree that the two aspects – if
there are two! – are closely interconnect-
ed; but I’m inclined to think that there
are important divisions of labour and
expertise. Scientists and philosophers
have very different training and usually
very different intellectual experience. I’d
say that that was much of the reason why
it’s so valuable for them to talk to one
another. But certainly I would agree that
major theoretical shifts are often as
much philosophical as empirical.
Would you be prepared to call yourself a the-
oretical biologist?
Well, I’d prefer to have biologists decide
whether to call me one. They have occa-
sionally, and I’m generally quite happy
when they do so. I would say, though,
that most of my work is definitely meant
to be philosophy; and as I mentioned,
although scientists and philosophers are
often interested in the same questions,
there are important differences in the
approaches and skills they are likely to
bring to those questions.
Interview

Do you think the most famous figure in
biology, Charles Darwin, was more of a
natural scientist, a natural philosopher, or a
mixture of both?
‘Natural philosopher’ is a nice term that
we’ve pretty much lost, and I think it
would fit Darwin very well. I would say,
though, that despite having revolution-
ary ideas that have undoubtedly had
profound effects on philosophy, there
are respects in which he very much
belongs in the category of scientist. We
can perhaps focus too much on The Ori-
gin of Species and The Descent of Man, and
not enough on his work, for example, on
pollination or earthworms. This work
shows the care, patience, and experi-
mental ingenuity that are very much
characteristics of scientists rather than
philosophers. But certainly he thought
deeply and synthetically about the
implications of all this detailed scientific
work, so I’d be happy to use any or all of
the labels you suggested.
You’ve made a substantial contribution to
many topics in the philosophy of biology, but
there are a few that I’d especially like to ask
about. Firstly, one concept endorsed by you is
promiscuous realism. Could you briefly
tell us what it is?
‘Promiscuous realism’ was an idea that
came out of my very early work on tax-
onomy. It actually began in response to
an idea of the analytical philosopher
Hilary Putnam that was very influential
in the 1970s and 80s. Putnam was inter-
ested in the reference of general terms,
and particularly of so-called ‘natural
kind’ terms – the words we use for
things that exist naturally as individuals.
He suggested that natural kind terms in
our everyday language, for example our
names for kinds of animals and plants,
were intended to refer to the real natu-
ral kinds – the real natures or essences
of things which would eventually be dis-
covered by science. So, famously, scien-
tists eventually discovered that water is
H2O, and this filled a kind of blank in
the meaning of the term ‘water’.
Anyway, Putnam suggested that in
biology a similar blank in terms such as
‘tiger’ or ‘lemon’ would eventually be
filled by a knowledge of genetics. This
seemed wrong to me, at least for species
Interview
Interview
terms. The relations between the pro-
fessional biological terms for biological
kinds and those terms in more common
use, or in use by non-scientific experts
such as gardeners or foresters, seemed
to me much more complex than this.
And indeed a little detailed exploration
confirmed not only the lack of fit
between the scientific and non-scientific
vocabularies, but also that there were
often good reasons for the ways that the
non-scientists divided up the natural
world. Classifications, it seemed to me,
had to be understood and were justified
in terms of the purposes for the classifi-
cations; and the (various) purposes of
scientists were not the same as those of
fishermen, foresters, or furriers.
This was not the first time anyone
had had such an idea, of course. Where
promiscuous realism was somewhat out
of the ordinary was in the realism. Gen-
erally, purpose-relative classification has
gone along with the idea that classifica-
tion is largely a social activity, creating
an order that we impose on the world.
On the contrary, it seemed to me that
the various classifications did respect
real features of the world, and that these
features made our classifications either
well- or ill-suited to our purposes
depending on the purpose. When I later
started describing the world as ‘disor-
dered’, I also argued that there were
many superimposed and interacting
threads of order within, or emerging
from, the disorder. This idea is in
strong contrast, of course, to the still
widely held assumption that the world
only has room for a single unique set of
laws and the division of kinds that they
govern. Much of my subsequent philo-
sophical career might be understood as
following through the implications of
my contrary idea.
Do you think that if biologists and others
adopt promiscuous realism, this would affect
something in a ‘real science-making’ way?
It certainly might have an effect on the
science it most directly addresses, sys-
tematics. As readers of David Hull’s
wonderful book, Science as a Process
(1990), will know, debates among propo-
nents of different schools of taxonomy
can be acrimonious and even vicious. It’s
August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 21
hard to imagine that
they would carry on that
way if they agreed that there
was no single correct way to classify
organisms.
There has been some discussion,
including occasionally in scientific jour-
nals, of the application of promiscuous
realism in other fields, including
medicine, economics, and psychiatry. It
has been discussed in relation also to
physical sciences such as chemistry and
astronomy, but here mainly by philoso-
phers. I’m not sure, however, that it is the
kind of thesis that is very relevant to the
day-to-day practice of science, belonging
rather to wider debates about the poten-
tial validity of diverse methodologies.
I might mention that I take one of
the most important audiences for the
position outside the philosophy of sci-
ence to be other parts of philosophy.
Philosophers outside the philosophy of
science still tend to think too much in
terms of a unique set of natural kinds
and the laws that determine their
behaviour. This can have harmful effects
in many areas of philosophy, especially
the philosophy of mind.
In 2018 Oxford University Press published a
book edited by you and Daniel Nicholson
called Everything Flows: Towards a Pro-
cessual Philosophy of Biology. What is
process-based biology, and how does it affect
our understanding of living organisms?
A major attraction of process biology for
me is that it can provide a deeper expla-
nation of promiscuous realism. In the
world of things that most philosophers
have assumed – where big things like
organisms are structures of little things
like organs, cells, molecules, and eventu-
ally subatomic particles – pluralism is
just a contingent possibility. Things
might have fallen perfectly into natural
kinds, demarcated by their real, defining
essences, but just happened not to do so.
However, in a world of processes, mat-
ters are different. Our familiar classifica-
tions are static descriptions, a list of
properties that a thing will possess if it is
a member of a particular kind; but in a
world of processes these properties can
only reflect an instantaneous cross-sec-
tion through a world in constant flux.
Science
Starting with processes on an evolu-
tionary time scale – evolving lineages –
these are of course unique processes, and
processes with no predetermined trajec-
tory. The constituents of these evolving
lineages are individual organisms. These
organisms, we now understand, exhibit a
high degree of developmental plasticity
themselves, which is to say, they also do
not follow a precise preset trajectory in
their development. So a species is a set of
variable processes interacting to generate
a process with a trajectory that is chang-
ing unpredictably, partly in response to
the unpredictable activities of the organ-
isms themselves. Finally – and very
importantly – these lineages are far from
being independent from one another.
The near universality of symbiosis tells
us that lineages are deeply intertwined in
vital but evolving relations to other lin-
eages. Sometimes this intertwining of
processes reaches a point at which we
consider the whole to be a single process.
In summary, a world consisting of con-
stantly evolving, constantly intertwined
processes, is not one that will provide a
single privileged set of descriptions of its
constituent elements. The pluralist, or
promiscuous realist, perspective becomes
necessary for any coherent understand-
ing of the actual world.
Your pluralistic approach to classification
also concerns humans. This is one of the
issues that illustrates why philosophy of biol-
ogy has relevance outside the disciplines of
biology and philosophy. What are some
implications of pluralist reasoning concern-
ing human categories?
Debates in the human sciences – for
example on the relations between genet-
ics, evolution, and culture – could also be
much more productive if the tendency to
suppose that there is one right way of
describing the phenomena could be
avoided. One particularly clear example
would be the question of race. If it were
generally appreciated that the human
species encompasses multiple overlapping
and cross-cutting patterns of variation
with regard to culture, genotype, and
phenotype, it would be hard to defend
any idea of race, which sees us as com-
prising distinct natural kinds with their
own essential properties. But as this case
illustrates, I tend to think that promiscu-
22 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019
ous realism is in many ways more rele-
vant to consumers of science – not least
philosophers! – than to producers of it.
Most scientists work comfortably within
a set of categories tailored for their own
questions and interests, and probably
don’t think a lot about whether these cat-
egories are well adapted for quite differ-
ent concerns. But scientists interested in
a topic such as the correlations between
disease-disposing genetic variants and
geographic origin, say, need to be more
aware that their findings are likely to be
interpreted as support for a generally
racialist framework of ideas.
I also have a longstanding interest in
the metaphysics of sex and gender –
another question that becomes much
clearer from the perspective of a process
metaphysics. Sex itself is not a straightfor-
wardly dichotomous concept, since nature
provides us with a range of intermediate
cases, which are sometimes assigned to
one side of the dichotomy by fairly brutal
surgical intervention. And gender pro-
vides an even more culturally and histori-
cally diverse set of social categories. All
this is exactly what should be expected
from a process perspective that stresses
that sex and gender are both developmen-
tal outcomes depending on a wide range
of internal and external influences.
I’d like to touch upon one more topic that
illustrates how the philosophy of biology finds
its way into wider social issues. Evolutionary
psychology is quite a popular trend that
appeals to evolutionary theory when explain-
ing or justifying various human behavioural
traits, from marital promiscuity to attitudes
towards refugees during migration crises. To
what extent can we appeal to evolutionary
explanations in this sort of context, and to
what extent should we remain sceptical?
Generally this is an area in which for a
long time I have urged scepticism. I
have to say that there is, in my view, a
lot of very bad science being applied
here. I have argued for many years that
the evolutionary psychology that under-
stands contemporary human behaviour
in terms of mental modules evolved in
the Stone Age is based on an obsolete
and indefensible view of evolution. And
much behavioural genetics still assumes
a relation between genotype (your
genetic make-up) and phenotype (your
characteristics) that has been entirely
refuted by recent work in genetics.
Again, all of this becomes much clear-
er from a view that sees organisms, and
humans in particular, as highly plastic
developing processes rather than things
with a fixed set of essential properties.
The human developmental process
depends on a wide variety of factors
among which the genome, for all its
importance, has no special privilege.
Moreover, many vital external influences
are highly variable between cultures and
historical periods, and are subject to
constant change, in part as a result of
deliberate human action. The increas-
ingly influential idea of niche construc-
tion in evolutionary biology is very help-
ful in this context. Humans are the
supreme niche constructors, developing
in an enormously complex environment
– cities, schools, hospitals, and much
more – that reflects many generations of
intense human activity. To suppose that
the kinds of behavioural traits you men-
tion are to be understood merely in
terms of genes selected in a distant
epoch ignores these crucial influences in
a way that makes the attempted explana-
tions largely worthless. PN
• Edit Talpsepp-Randla is a Research Fellow
of Philosophy of Science at the University of
Tartu, Estonia. She received her PhD in
2013 from the University of Bristol, and
specialises in the Philosophy of Biology.
Interview
MOSAIC OF ALEXANDER FROM THE HOUSE OF THE FAUN IN POMPEII
Aristotle & The Good Ruler
Maxwell Cameron wants politicians to take a lesson from Aristotle’s book.
dysseus was a good captain, so he took care not to
O mention the six-headed monster ready to snatch his
sailors and devour them alive. He worried that his
crew would be so terrified that they would “leave
the oars in a panic and huddle down below” (The Odyssey). The
goddess Circe had warned him that this beast, Scylla, had
“twelve flapping feet, and six necks enormously long, and at the
end of each neck a horrible head with three rows of teeth set
thick and close, full of black death.” She also advised him that
hewing close to Scylla’s cave was better than entering the other
side of the channel, where a terrible sea monster, Charybdis,
could swallow the entire ship and crew. “To lose six of your
crew is much better than to lose them all at once,” she advised.
“My friends,” Odysseus said as their ship approached the
strait, “we are not unacquainted with trouble.” He reminded
his crew that they had foiled the Cyclops with his ingenious
plan, then he told the rowers to “row away like men” and advised
his pilot to “pay heed, for you hold our helm in your hands.
Keep her well away from the smoke and surge, and hug the
cliffs; whatever you do, don’t let her run off in that direction,
or we shall all be drowned.” Then Odysseus put on his armor,
grabbed his spears, and took to the deck, straining his eyes to
see Scylla. Suddenly, Charybdis swallowed up so much water
that a deep whirlpool was formed, exposing the rocks and sand
of the ocean floor: “As we gazed in our fear at the death on this
side, at the same moment Scylla grabbed six of my crew.” Using
her long necks like fishing lines, she dragged the men back to
her cave, “shrieking and stretching out their hands” and call-
ing Odysseus’ name – a “most pitiable sight.”
Aristotle and the Ship of State
Aristotle (384-322 BC) might well have thought of Odysseus’
predicament when he used the metaphor of sailors on a ship to
answer three of the most enduring questions of political thought.
They were, firstly, whether “the virtue of a good person and a
good citizen is the same or not” (Politics, 1276b 20); secondly,
whether “the virtue of the good ruler is the same as that of a
good person” (1277a 20); and, finally, whether wisdom and
virtue could be taught. “Like the sailor, the citizen is a member
of a community,” wrote Aristotle. “Now, sailors have different
functions, for one of them is a rower, another a pilot, and a third
a look-out, a fourth is described by some similar term; and while
the precise definition of each individual’s virtue applies exclu-
sively to that person, there is, at the same time, a common defi-
nition applicable to them all. For they all have a common object,
which is safety in navigation.” (1276b 25)
Aristotle uses the term ‘virtue’ (arete) in the sense of ‘excel-
lence in performing a function’. What makes a rower excellent is
strength and skill with the oars. The pilot, on the other hand, is
a master of navigation. While the look-out must have the knowl-
edge and vision to interpret the clouds, winds, tides, and currents.
In this context, whether the rowers are generally good people
matters less than their particular skill or ability to row well, and
the same goes for the others. The captain coordinates these activ-
ities for “the good of those committed to his care” (1279a 5).
Whereas the rower, pilot, or look-out may be judged on their
performance of their particular activities, the captain is to be
judged in relation to the aim of bringing the ship safely to port.
It was the good of his crew that motivated Odysseus to take
the lesser of two evils. He withheld knowledge of Scylla because
he could not expect his crew to equal his bravery. His authority
over the sailors was not based on force or rank, but on respect
and friendship. They could disobey him. In fact, shortly after
escaping Scylla and Charybdis, they overruled his decision to
avoid the ‘delectable’ temptations of the island of Helios Hyper-
ion. When Eurylochos, his second-in-command, rebelled and led
August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 23
the crew onto the island, Odysseus said, “I must give way to force.
I am one against many.” But Homer made sure to emphasize the
consequence of their disobedience. After the crew ate Helios’s
food their ship was destroyed, and only Odysseus survived.
Can Virtue be Taught?
I said Odysseus was a good captain even though he deceived his
crew. Why?
For one thing, he always put his crew first and never retreated
from danger to himself. For another, he made them better
sailors. Odysseus worked in partnership not with the more timid
or cowardly impulses of his crew, but with their capacity for
courage and self-sacrifice. There is no dilemma more difficult
than the sacrifice of a few for the safety of many, but the capac-
ity to make and to demand such sacrifice rests on politics’ most
precious resource: the idea of the common good and the abil-
ity to increase it by modelling excellence. Can we cultivate a
capacity for good in both our people and our rulers?
Aristotle was appointed by Philip II of Macedon to tutor his
son Alexander; so for him the question ‘Can virtue be taught?’
was not a hypothetical one. In Annabel Lyon’s novel The Golden
Mean (2009), Aristotle asks Alexander to name a virtue. Alexan-
der, who aspires to glory, names ‘courage’. Aristotle explains
that want of courage is cowardice, while excess of courage is
rashness. At first, Alexander mocks his tutor, anticipating his
argument that virtue is following a mean or middle path, saying:
“You... prize mediocrity.”
“Not at all,” responds Aristotle, “Moderation and mediocrity
are not the same. Think of the extremes as caricatures, if that
helps. The mean, what we seek, is that which is not a carica-
ture. Mediocrity doesn’t enter into it, you see?”
At this point Alexander mentions his brother, who he is
ashamed of due to his cognitive and physical disabilities. “Am I
an extreme, next to him?” he asks. Aristotle answers by inviting
Alexander to spend a day at the beach with his brother. The lesson
is magnanimity – to be moderate toward subordinates
(Nichomachean Ethics, 1124b 20). A further lesson is that the virtues
reinforce each other, or as Amelie Rorty puts it, they ‘hunt in
packs’. Aristotle knew that his young student was vain and cruel.
Without magnanimity he could not develop civic courage, which
involves feeling shame at what is dishonourable. Understanding
this takes character and judgment of the kind that Aristotle called
‘practical wisdom’ (phronesis), which is a person’s “ability to delib-
erate well about what is good and expedient” and “conducive to
the good life in general.” (NE, 1140a 25-30)
Practical wisdom was, for Aristotle, the virtue of virtues, or the
master virtue. Without practical wisdom, someone like Alexan-
der might have particular excellences, such as skill in battle, but
he would lack the character and judgment to show magnanimity
toward those he conquered. This would make him a formidable
soldier but a terrible person, and thus a poor ruler. The “virtue of
a ruler differs from that of a citizen” (Politics,1277a 20-25), and
they are not equally worthy of praise. The citizen might be a sol-
dier, teacher, sailor, or doctor. Given the diversity of citizens and
forms of constitution, not all citizens need be similarly virtuous.
Some might possess practical wisdom; but all who rule must.
How does one acquire practical wisdom? Aristotle’s answer
was: by practicing moderation in all things.
24 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019
This is not as easy as it might sound. First is the difficulty in
finding the golden middle way, or golden mean. This is not an
arithmetic middle, but neither is it inexact. A ship navigating a
narrow passage might veer more toward one side; but there will
always be a best course for safely reaching port. Second, as the
political theorist Ken Sharpe recently wrote to me, “there is no
algorithm or rule that the navigator can be taught to find the
best passage under the circumstances of changing tides, winds
and weather, but the navigator can be taught through practice,
apprenticed to an expert who models and coaches how to find
the mean in changing circumstances. This is why teachers are
so important.” (Personal communication, July 17, 2018).
Can Ethical Politics be Taught?
Aristotle says that the salvation of the community is the common
business of all citizens (Politics, 1276b 30), and to this end they
must perform their own business well (40). However, like the
captain who must navigate the ship safely to port, the ruler must
have the wisdom and virtue to transcend the standpoint of par-
ticular citizens and focus on the common good (1287b 5).
The idea that rulers must be wiser and more virtuous than
ordinary citizens is alien to our understanding of politics. We
do not regard elected officials as exemplary citizens. The
strangeness of Aristotle’s view should prompt us to ask why pol-
itics has become so debased in our view.
Aristotle understood democracy to involve the direct partic-
ipation of citizens in public office. Democracy was enabled when
a state was “framed upon the principle of equality and likeness”,
in which citizens “think that they ought to hold office by turns”
(1279a 10). This explains why Aristotle, like many of his con-
temporaries, viewed democracy as an especially demanding
system of government: it required practical wisdom of all citi-
zens, or at least those who held public office – which for Aris-
totle could in principle be any citizen.
Aristotle’s ship metaphor suggests that those in authority
need practical wisdom in order to achieve the common goals
they share with those over whom they have responsibility. But
notice that Aristotle was concerned with a specific kind of rule:
that which “is exercised over free people and equals by birth.”
He was thinking not of the relationship between servant and
master (for the servant obeys due to necessity, not reason), but
of the kind of relationships that exist among free citizens. In
such relationships authority requires the practical wisdom to
find ways of serving the common good. That is why Aristotle
embraced the view that “whosoever has never learned to obey
cannot be a good commander” (1277b 10-15). But not every
captain, teacher, or ruler has such practical wisdom. And that,
Aristotle thought, was a serious problem.
Hannah Arendt also recognized the centrality of practical
wisdom to democracy when she argued in The Promise of Politics
(2005) that politics is the art by which we navigate our plurality
and differences. Each citizen, insofar as she enters the public
sphere, must balance diverse aims or goods. Often we are moti-
vated by a cause or an issue; but when we engage in deliberation,
judgment, and act freely as equals with others, we face the even
greater challenge of balancing our own aims with those of other
members of the political community. That takes practical wisdom.
It is therefore deeply troubling that we do not seek to edu-

cate either our public or our leaders in the arts of politics and
citizenship. Indeed, it’s an astonishing fact of modern life that
no effort is made by public institutions to educate politicians in
the art of leadership. Alone among activities of consequence for
the public good, no opportunities exist for preparing people for
entry into practical politics. Political parties sometimes offer
some training for candidates prior to elections, and legislatures
typically offer basic training to newly-elected legislators, but
no standing institutions provide mentoring and coaching for
people who aspire to enter politics. Democracies trust amateurs
to run the most complex organizations in modern societies,
manage the largest budgets, and make decisions involving every-
thing from statutory rules to regulatory minutiae.
Why do we not train politicians?
One reason is the belief that politics can be learned but not
taught – that the learning happens on the job, not from read-
ing textbooks or studying.
It is certainly true that, like any practice, politics is acquired
through experience; but there are many such practices that are
also taught. Much of what politicians do on a day-to-day basis is
entirely teachable – including law-making and legislative analysis,
budgets, estimates, supply motions and money bills, parliamen-
tary procedures and rules, committee work, caucus work, the roles
and offices of the legislature, voting, constituency service, man-
Aristotle with a Bust of Homer
Rembrandt, 1652
aging a constituency office, political communications, relation-
ships with the civil service, lobbyists, and the media. Moreover,
professional schools provide many examples of ways in which prac-
tices can be honed through experiential learning, from moot courts
in law, to clerkships in medicine, to war games in the military.
A deeper objection is that even if the mechanics (so to speak)
of politics can be taught, it is not clear that aspiring politicians
can be taught to be good.
It must be conceded that people will be unlikely to learn
political virtue from a school of politics unless they enter with
at least some sense of calling to public service – for some people
enter politics for the wrong reasons, or lack the disposition to
become wise practitioners. Yet the same objection could be
directed at any other professional school, like a law school or a
school of business. The rationale for such schools is precisely
to inculcate good practice. A law school that did not cultivate
an appreciation for the rule of law, a business school that did
not encourage ethical business practices, or a medical school
that did not put care of patients at the center, would be regarded
as deficient by most practitioners.
Perhaps the most troubling objection people raise is that pol-
itics is incorrigibly unethical and irredeemably corrupt, and that
any ethical training of politicians would simply disarm them in
the face of Machiavellian adversaries.
August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 25
 Whatever one might think about such a dim view of politics
(and it is a problematic view in the context of constitutional democ-
racy), the challenge from a teaching perspective is to prepare politi-
cians to make wise judgments in morally ambiguous circumstances.
There are times in the life of every politician when their con-
science will conflict with the demands of the job, and handling
these situations well requires preparation. At the very least, it is
worth exploring the possibility that a little preparation could enable
politicians to deal with these dilemmas more ethically.
A Visit to a School for Politicians
A pilot program to test the idea of a school for politicians has
been developed at the University of British Columbia. The Insti-
tute for Future Legislators is designed to provide practically-
oriented learning and opportunities for experimentation in the
practice of politics. Participants attend weekend bootcamps in
which they hone their political skills and knowledge with coach-
ing from former statespersons. Aspiring politicos are placed in
situations in which they have to choose between loyalty to their
party, the views of their constituents, and their own consciences.
They learn to balance these goods. They are given opportuni-
ties to collectively deliberate about such topics as whether to
enter the political arena at all. I have been authorized by one
participant to describe her experience. I will call her Jasmine.
On day one of the bootcamp, participants were asked why they
wanted to enter politics. Many said they wanted to make the world
a better place. To get beyond platitudes, they were asked to share
personal stories. Jasmine talked about her family, her community,
and the years she’d spent in advocacy, working with people strug-
gling with mental health, addiction, homelessness, violence, and
poverty. Through this she had come to realize that “we can lobby
Odysseus Between Scylla and Charybdis by Henry Fuseli, 1794
26 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019
government as much as we want; that’s not going to get us results.”
Having a seat at the table would provide “an opportunity to shift
things.” Yet she recognized that she needed to develop her politi-
cal skills, specifically with respect to when to offer solutions, and
when to step back and let others take the lead.
Two weeks later, participants were in the Council Cham-
bers in Vancouver City Hall. A former Mayor was acting as
Mayor, and a sitting councillor was acting as City Manager.
Participants were debating whether to raise property taxes to
generate funds to fill gaps in the response to Vancouver’s opioid
crisis. Jasmine was role-playing as a councillor and did a superb
job. Later, one of her colleagues nominated her as party leader.
She accepted the nomination. When two others were nomi-
nated, both males and both more experienced in electoral poli-
tics (one was an elected leader of a major union; the other a vice
president of a riding association), Jasmine abruptly withdrew.
She was asked why by a facilitator. Did she not say she wanted
to sit at the table? Did she not think she would be good?
She allowed her name to stand, and was elected.
In the reflective discussion held at the end of the day, Jasmine
was encouraged to think about her experience:
Facilitator: You had a moment where you had to decide whether to step
up or pull back... Go through the process of thinking about that.
Jasmine: I have this tendency to second guess myself on how much I talk,
and how much space I take up... I just thought ‘Oh, there are other people
interested in doing this; that’s okay, I’ll just pull back’, not recognizing at
the moment that there are other people interested in me doing this [laughs].
Another participant: I’m a strong advocate for you.
Jasmine: I thank you for that. Because I didn’t ever think about it that
way. It’s not just me doing something that I want to do, but it’s other peo-
ple who want me to do it. Right?
The councillor who had acted as City Manager offered the
following advice.
Councillor: To this question of ‘Am I taking up too much space?’ You
may or may not be, and its going to be contextual, and I cannot really pass
judgment on that... You only really then have two options. You either step
forward or support some one else to step forward. If what you’re doing is
just stepping back, that’s a different thing from saying ‘I’m going to help
this other person who has no experience gain experience.’ That’s an active
decision as opposed to just pulling back.
The councillor and the other participants reframed the deci-
sion so that it was less about ‘Should I step up or pull back? Am
I the right person to lead?’ It was rather a decision about how
‘we as a group’ address a need. How to proceed depends on the
context, the particulars of the situation, and the aims of the
group. Jasmine needed to focus on a shared goal, and then find
a path forward. That might involve her stepping up, but it could
also involve supporting someone else.
The next day Jasmine spoke with a participant who had a ten-
dency to dominate discussions. She asked him to help her find ways
of bringing more voices into the discussions. By guiding him in a
direction that would benefit the whole discussion, Jasmine demon-
strated that she was acquiring what political practitioners need:
practical wisdom. That’s the secret ingredient of good politics.
 Your
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Democracy and Practical Wisdom
One learns to be the captain of a ship by serving under a cap-
tain and having command of a crew (Politics, 1277b 586). Sim-
ilarly, the ability to govern well depends on skills and knowl-
edge that are best acquired by practicing under the supervision
of experienced statespersons. The ancient Greeks understood
that cultivating the virtues necessary to be good rulers and cit-
izens was a necessary defense against the sophistry of self-
aggrandizing, power-hungry and opportunistic demagogues.
We moderns have been less concerned about this danger, at
least until recently. Perhaps we have grown too fond of the
false dichotomy between a government of laws and one of
people, and have forgotten that laws do not enforce themselves,
but are enforced by people. When charlatans attain power, our
best defense is the characters and judgment of the people
around them, not the laws alone. Since the defense of our insti-
tutions is in the hands of civil servants and rulers, should we
not take care to foster their character and judgment?
If the answer is yes, then training politicians is anything but
elitist. It may be more elitist for public institutions to fail to pre-
pare citizens for the exercise of civic duty. We may neglect this
task out of a principled reluctance to tell other people how to
live their lives, yet one of the most challenging features of demo-
cratic citizenship (and a source of tension between democracy
and liberalism) is that for democracy to work well, citizens must
possess civic virtues.
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We are invested in one another, and must rely upon one
other. That’s why we need each other to be virtuous. At the
very least, democracy demands citizens with the courage to be
reliable defenders of democratic institutions. As Alasdair Mac-
Intyre pointed out in After Virtue, the Greeks understood that
to be courageous meant “to be someone on whom reliance can
be placed.” That kind of courage does not arise spontaneously:
it must be cultivated.
If we are to prepare citizens for public life, we must go beyond
old-school civic education. Preparing people for democracy
should be at the core of the educational mission of public schools
and universities. Education must involve habituating aspiring
practitioners to feel, deliberate, judge, and act in the service of
the common good; it must instill civic virtue by providing oppor-
tunities to cultivate the knowledge, skill, and motivation to be
good citizens and statespersons; and it must restore the idea
that politics is an ennobling activity.
Aristotle complained that politicians were doing too little to
teach their fellow citizens how to legislate (NE, 1181a). His
lament still resonates over two millennia later.
© PROF. MAXWELL A. CAMERON 2019
Maxwell A. Cameron is Director of the Centre for the Study of
Democratic Institutions at the University of British Columbia, and
author of Political Institutions and Practical Wisdom (Oxford
University Press, 2018). He is grateful to Joshua Cohen, Philip
Resnick, and Kenneth Sharpe for comments and criticisms.
August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 27
Evil
The Good, The Bad and Theodicy
John Holroyd on the pitfalls of academic debates about God and evil.
n the classic spaghetti western The Good, The Bad and The
I Ugly (directed by Sergio Leone, 1966), three gunslingers
co-operate and compete with each other in search of a
cache of gold. None of them trusts either of the others,
and in the final shoot-out ‘The Good’ character (played by Clint
Eastwood) kills ‘The Bad’, leaving the third in the trio tied up
on top of his share of the loot.
In debates about whether or not a benevolent, omnipotent,
all-knowing God would allow evil and suffering in the world,
both more and less is at stake than for the characters in the film
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. On both sides there is the honour
of ‘winning’ or the indignity of ‘losing’ a public debate. But for
many of the disputants who are religious these arguments are
about matters of eternal significance for every person, whether
they appreciate that or not. For some atheists, too, the issues
have seemed imperative. Why waste one’s life on a delusion,
they ask, especially when this God delusion can be made abun-
dantly clear? Each party to this debate is engaged to some degree
in a life commitment, pursued with passion and conviction.
In this article I will not seek to rehearse the arguments for
or against the view that the existence of evil and suffering proves
that there is no God. Instead, I want to stand back a little from
such debates, observe them from a variety of perspectives and
consider their ethical character.
So let’s be clear at the outset what is at stake. Epicurus gave
us an early formulation of the ‘problem of evil’, a logical prob-
lem to do with believing in God. He wrote:
“God either wishes to take away evils and is unable; or he is able
and unwilling; or he is neither willing nor able; or he is both willing
and able. If he is willing and unable, he is feeble, which is not in
accordance with the character of God, if he is able and unwilling,
he is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if he is neither
willing nor able he is both feeble and envious, and therefore not
God, if he is both willing and able, which alone is suitable for God,
from what source then are evils? Or why does he not remove
them?”
In more recent times Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) coined
the term ‘theodicy’ to refer to systematic attempts to defend
belief in God in the face of evil and suffering, such as the argu-
ments offered by St Augustine. In the last twenty years the
New Atheists, such as Richard Dawkins and the late Christo-
pher Hitchens, have brought such debates about theodicy to
the fore, excoriating the God of the Bible and the God of the
Qur’an for their alleged misdeeds. We might think of these
28 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019
writers, alongside sceptical philosophical heavyweights such as
David Hume and John Stuart Mill, as anti-theodicists.
Obscuring Evil
I want to focus on the fact that there has been, for some time, a
reaction against the type of philosophical debate that argues
back and forth, critiquing and defending specific concepts of
God in relation to problems of evil. This reaction has come from
some philosophers who are themselves religious believers. Ter-
rance Tilley, for example, in his 1991 book The Evils of Theodicy
writes:
“The usual practice of academic theodicy has marginalised, sup-
planted, ‘purified’, and ultimately silenced those expressing grief,
cursing God, consoling the sorrowful and trying practically to
understand and counteract evil events, evil actions and evil practices.
I have come to see theodicy as a discourse practice which disguises
real evils while those evils continue to afflict people.” (Tilley, The
Evils of Theodicy)
Let’s consider two closely related points that Tilley makes
here. First, theodicy obscures the nature of evils actually occur-
ring in the world. I would like to broaden this first point and
add that on the other side of the debate the anti-theodicists are
just as guilty of this. Second, and implied by the first point, philo-
sophical debates about problems of evil and suffering in rela-
tion to God are problematic because they detract from other
ways of coping with suffering, coming to terms with it and coun-
tering it. Because these other ways are of moral value this is a
moral problem.
The first point here is to do with evil and suffering being
transformed from something one experiences into a third person
phenomenon. Awful physical or psychological realities for real
people are distanced from us as they become objects of rational
observation and analysis. The ‘phenomenological distance’
between the torture chamber and Auschwitz on the one hand,
and the philosophy seminar on the other, needs much greater
recognition if we are to be true to what is at issue. Acknowledg-
ing this involves accepting that academic debate all too easily
encourages some severe limitations of perspective and under-
standing. If the nature of debate about the problem of evil
obscures the nature of evil itself, then that is self-defeating.
This brings me to Tilley’s second point, that the debate
between the theodicists and anti-theodicists can detract from
other types of discourse, such as coming to terms with and coun-
tering suffering. Both the theodicist and the anti-theodicist can

be guilty of this, though for good reasons Tilley focuses on how
the theodicist is at fault. I want to take an example of this men-
tioned by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion. Regarding an
encounter with the Christian philosopher Professor Richard
Swinburne, Dawkins writes: “I was on a television panel with
Swinburne, and also with our Oxford colleague Professor Peter
Atkins. Swinburne at one point attempted to justify the Holo-
caust on the grounds that it gave the Jews a wonderful oppor-
tunity to be courageous and noble. Peter Atkins splendidly
growled: ‘May you rot in hell’.” (The God Delusion p.64)
Like Atkins, I recoil from the comments made by Swinburne.
As I reflect on my own reaction to Swinburne’s remarks the prob-
lem is not so much that the idea is illogical (which it is). Rather I
morally object to a profound misapprehension, a deafening
detachment from the human situation, a rush to defend a spe-
cific concept of God while leaving humanity desolate. Swinburne
might even be accused, from within his own faith, of idolatry, of
turning concepts into something to worship and of making an
altar piled high with human suffering for that purpose. But let’s
suppose for a moment that Swinburne’s desperate apologetics
made some sort of logical sense. This question would still remain:
does the logic of the argument align with answers to the broader
question of how to live one’s life? The philosopher cannot in
some priestly fashion hand down answers to those on the front
line of life. To think they can is once again to disregard the phe-
nomenological and moral gap between Auschwitz and the semi-
nar room. Part of Tilley’s point about the kind of apologetics we
see demonstrated by Swinburne is that they exhibit values that
need to be called into question. Prioritising defence of a concept
of God over empathetic engagement with victims of suffering is
a morally dubious option when seeking to defend the good.
I want to take this direction of Tilley’s thinking but apply it
to the anti-theodicist as well. Anti-theodicists argue that it is
irrational to believe in a benevolent, omnipotent God given the
existence of evil. They sometimes offer this as a reason for dis-
regarding the strength that prayer or meditation, ritual, fast or
festival may offer. For many anti-theodicists, such a collection
of delusions, however comforting, will not shift the argument
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Evil
one iota. They say that following the arguments closely will
involve us seeing, in the cold light of dawn, a universe without
a God; a heartless world, a spiritless world in which we must be
self-reliant and in which we will be all the better for that. This
view assumes that the non-believer is correct in their arguments
– something with which I have a great deal of sympathy. But it
also assumes that because they are correct, the logical argu-
ments have more weight in personal encounters with evil and
suffering than all the positive experiences that a religious
believer may have from their religious engagement. They
should, in other words, relinquish that religious engagement
and their life commitments thus far, for the sake of an argu-
ment. It is this second view with which I take issue. For many
religious believers the task of alleviating suffering, of forging
communal resistance against hopelessness and despair, is inte-
gral to their faith. It is not something that can be distilled from
a set of beliefs, but rather an entire life system whose motiva-
tional force is its integrity. My point is that the logic of a spe-
cific argument about problems of evil should be seen from a
first person perspective as part of a broader set of considerations
about how to live life. Such considerations include the various
ways of engaging with suffering that we find most effective.
Making Logic Moral
I do not wish to claim that philosophy of religion seminars are
redundant, but I do want to make some remarks about their
limitations.
At its best, the debate between the theodicists and anti-theod-
icists is both a logical and moral enterprise. Whether or not
belief in an all-good, omnipotent God is compatible with the
existence of evil is a question of great importance in the lives of
many people, and the debate is an attempt to pursue that vital
question. To do so honestly, to seek what is most reasonable to
believe whatever one’s personal background or inclinations and
however much one’s findings may clash with existing beliefs, is
a moral pursuit. So I do not advocate a halt to this debate. Quite
the contrary. It should remain part of an ongoing exploration
both within and beyond academia. Clearly the debate can lead
Theodicy: hiding in the monastery whilst evil flourishes outside?
August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 29
 Evil
Theodicy: searching for logical gold in the graveyard?
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some people to believe in a God and others to lose their faith.
These arguments are part of the fabric of many people’s delib-
erations and perspectives, but how the arguments fit together
with personal perspectives is a complex question. It is often ‘rea-
sonably’ driven not so much by some diktat from philosophers
that one should be ‘logical’, but by the necessities of life. In our
various searches for meaning, psychological survival or personal
fulfilment, we are often concerned with what we think it is ratio-
nal to believe or do. It is hard to justify a claim about what role
an argument should play within the living of someone else’s life,
without entering into dialogue with them, and into a genuine
attempt to appreciate their situation in life. Thinkers from either
side of the debate that fail to do this are clumsy; in this sense
theodicy is indeed ugly. Discussions about problems of evil and
suffering are at their best when the participants put aside the
desire to convert someone to their own point of view, and instead
are open to an exchange that aims to deal practically with suf-
fering while simultaneously reflecting upon its nature.
You may imagine that I wish to lower discussions about prob-
lems of evil and suffering to a subjective level. I think this under-
estimates the connectedness of human experience within and
beyond the question of believing in a God. Arguments about
theodicy find their place within the context of living a life, and
of living with others. To say this is to protest against Descartes’
disengaged rationality and allow that there are real issues that
concern real choices about how to live life alongside disputes
about the logical character of philosophical arguments. Believer
and disbeliever alike will do best if they take this approach.
The most powerful reason for rejecting this kind of perspec-
tive is offered by many of the New Atheists. It could be put in
this way. If belief in God is a moral hazard then persuading
people to stop doing so would seem to be a moral good; and
belief in God is a moral hazard; therefore arguing against theod-
icy is a moral duty. We should be clear however, that the theod-
icist typically believes they are similarly justified in defending
God and in sometimes arguing for God’s existence. If they can
persuade people to believe in God then, for them, this is a moral
. good and the lives of those converted will be immeasurably
. improved. This is a live debate not least because what the ‘good’
. 30 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019
is by which life is to be morally evaluated is a matter of dispute.
The constituents of moral evaluation, such as the importance
of community, equality of opportunity, tolerance and individ-
ual freedom, are themselves at the heart of the disagreement.
All the while, the sacred and the ‘secular sacred’ collide with no
resolution in sight.
Sharing’s Caring
Yet a desire to understand and work together needn’t be obliter-
ated by the fact of disagreement, as the philosopher Paul Hedges
notes in his book Towards Better Disagreement: Religion and Athe-
ism in Dialogue (2016). People are most able to reach mutual
understanding about experiences they share. Humans of all reli-
gious persuasions and of none share experiences of grief, tragedy
and the prospect of death. They also share the practical and ide-
ological question that arises generally and in relation to suffer-
ing: how can we live life and continue living it in the worst of cir-
cumstances? Mutual exchange between faiths about this question
is happening all the time. When the tsunami of 2004 devastated
the lives and communities of Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and
Christians alike across parts of southeast Asia, many found a great
deal of camaraderie within a variety of multicultures. Multicul-
tures make up an ever larger proportion of human societies. They
offer human beings rich opportunities to overcome the worst of
life because at their best they offer unparalleled opportunities for
the exchange of perspectives, lifestyles and values. Whether in
our cities or on social media or in the global village, atheistic and
religious perspectives alike will be richer for seeing themselves
as integral parts of such a multicultural home.
Sergio Leone’s famous western was a morality play. A con-
flict between three characters plays out before us on a barren
landscape before ‘the good’ ultimately wins out. The long argu-
ment over the problem of evil is also a morality play, but the
overly abstract nature of the debate is giving the upper hand to
‘the bad’ and ‘the ugly’. It really needn’t.
© JOHN HOLROYD 2019
John Holroyd taught philosophy and religion for many years. His
book Judging Religion: A Dialogue for Our Time will be out in a
few weeks.

Is Attributing Evil a Cognitive Bias?
Aner Govrin argues that a common perception of evil is mistaken.
W
hy do we still use the term ‘evil’? Why don’t we merely
say ‘very, very bad’, or ‘a severe moral failure’? I think
‘evil’ describes a category of moral failures of a certain
kind better than any other word. The question I want
to look at now is how we determine those kinds of moral failure.
For thousands of years, the concept of evil was closely linked
to a religious view of life. In Judaism and Christianity, evil in
human conduct (which is known specifically as ‘moral evil’) is
viewed as extreme defiance of God’s commandments. An act
of evil radically violates that holy code. However, despite the
evident religious connotations attached to the concept,
widespread use of the term has survived in today’s secular soci-
ety. People in the West still employ the term in a variety of
contexts. ‘Evil’ is used to describe war crimes, horrific acts of
murder, cruelty, violence, sexual abuse, and attempts to cause
suffering simply to gain pleasure from a victim’s distress.
One must assume that the concept has survived because people
still find it useful. And yet, although the term is quite common,
psychologists (and I am one) have usually refrained from dealing
with the subject of evil. In the professional discourse, evil has
been consistently viewed as at best an elusive topic, and at worst
a dangerous one. The handful of academic studies that relate to
evil are interested in exploring the psychology of evildoers, but
the properties that guide us in recognizing evil and distinguish-
ing it from ordinary wrongdoing remain a puzzle.
My main thesis is that moral evil is unique because it implies a
unique way of thinking on the part of the perpetrator of evil toward
his victim. Based on examples from the common use of the word
and from my research on the topic, I have found four co-occur-
ring features to be the most salient aspects of the prototype of evil.
I want to briefly consider these features, and then explain why per-
ceiving an act as evil is based on an attribution error. Still, we need
not fix this error, because making it is important for our survival.
Four Perceived Features of Moral Evil
First, in acts that are perceived as evil there is an extreme asym-
metry between victim and perpetrator. Think of the following
pairs: rapist/victim; child molester/child; Nazi soldier/Jewish
civilian. One feature common to most evil crimes is an extreme
gap in power relations between victim and perpetrator. When
an observer identifies evil, the victim is perceived as compara-
tively weak, helpless, defenseless, needy, and, at times, innocent.
Second, there’s a perceived lack of emotional connection
between the perpetrator and the victim’s vulnerability. The
observer’s impression is that the perpetrator clearly recognizes
a weak and helpless person or group, and that the aggressor acts
in full awareness of the victim’s vulnerability. But while in the
observer this vulnerability and weakness usually arouse empa-
thy and a desire to come to the victim’s defense, the aggressor’s
perceived feelings are assumed to be very different. From the
observer’s perspective, the victim’s vulnerability either fails to
arouse the aggressor’s concern, or even motivates the attack.
Evil
The third feature is the observer’s inability to identify with
the perpetrator’s perspective. The observer might find psycho-
logical motives which explain the aggressor’s behavior. How-
ever, his or her sense of bafflement remains, since explanation
and understanding are not the same thing. Indeed, there is much
debate within philosophy and psychology regarding their dif-
ferences. Often in cases of the perpetration of evil, the motives
remain external to the observer in the sense that even when they
are known, they do not resolve the mystery surrounding the
transgressor’s actions. We are unable to perceive a connection
between how we think and act, and this particular terrible deed.
Fourth, what might intensify the observer’s horror is an insu-
perable difference between the observer’s and perpetrator’s judg-
ment following the incident, as indicated by the perpetrator’s
lack of remorse. If anything can alter the observer’s moral judg-
ment of the case (which is not at all certain) it can only happen
through the aggressor coming to perceive the situation in much
the same way as the observer does – with the same degree of
horror, and the same level of incredulity in the face of the viola-
tion of normal human expectations. When the perpetrator lacks
remorse and regret after the act, or refuses to accept responsi-
bility for it, the observer finds himself emotionally shaken by the
way the aggressor does not perceive his own moral failure.
For some, these four features may be present in every attri-
bution of evil within a perpetrator/victim relationship, from rape,
murder, pedophilia or genocide, to merely taking pleasure in the
victim’s suffering after humiliating them in public. (A person
who takes pleasure in the suffering of others will be judged evil
even if he was not responsible for the victim’s suffering.)
To illustrate these features working together, let’s take an
example. Gabriel, a sports teacher in a school, takes pleasure in
repeatedly instructing Raphael, a six-year-old overweight kid, to
jump over a bar, merely in order to see Raphael failing to do so
over and over again – to the great amusement of himself and of
other pupils. All the salient features of the prototype of evil are
present here: an extreme asymmetry in power between victim and
perpetrator; an observer might naturally think that Raphael’s vul-
nerability triggers the teacher’s cruelty; it is almost impossible for
the observer to take Gabriel’s perspective on the situation; and if
Gabriel were for instance to blame Raphael after being confronted
with his own moral failure, the observer will experience a second
shock, and his rage toward Gabriel will intensify.
Problems With These Aspects
If this analysis is correct, it means that moral evil is not funda-
mentally in the act itself, nor in the gravity of the damage done,
but is to be found in the nature of the relationship of the aggres-
sor to the victim in their vulnerability and weakness, or towards
those who are needy and dependent in general. These are the
acts that we see as evil. But are we right to do so? I suggest instead
that each attribution is false, or at least not necessary for an act
to be evil, and that the attribution relies on cognitive bias.
August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 31
 Evil
This bias can be seen in all four criteria. The relations of the
Nazis to the Jews can clearly demonstrate this. (Please note that
many of these factors are connected.)
First, asymmetry. The Germans experienced their defeat in
World War I as a great disgrace. The Versailles peace treaty
forced on Germany huge reparations, permitted Germany only
a very small military force, and took away lands. After the war
German citizens suffered from continuing poverty and wors-
ening economic conditions. The defeat was widely seen as the
result of betrayal by communists and Jews (this is called the ‘stab
in the back’ legend). Germans who supported the Nazi Party
did not experience themselves as
strong and powerful and generally
did not perceive Jews as weak and
helpless. On the contrary, they
thought the Jews were too power-
ful, dangerous, and threatened the
safety of the German people.
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An observer errs if he assumes
that the perpetrator sees the same
relatively powerless victim he does.
Whereas the observer perceives the
victim as needy, weak, and helpless,
the perpetrator often sees some-
thing very different.
Secondly, linked with that idea,
studies have found that in severe
cases of criminality perpetrators
often believe that their conduct was
justified in response to what they
perceived as an act of aggression by
their victim. From the observer’s
perspective, the Nazis must have
acted in full awareness of the Jews’
vulnerability; but from the Nazi per-
spective the Jews were not vulnera-
ble. In fact, many Germans saw
themselves as victims of Jews, not
the other way around. Similarily,
sadistic people have often them-
selves experienced severe abuse in
their childhood, and it is likely that
they perceive themselves as victims
of others. Raphael did not provoke Gabriel in any way, we may
suppose; but perhaps Gabriel the sadistic sports teacher feels con-
tinually put upon and disrespected by those around him, and
somehow has the illusion that poor Raphael is connected with
his oppressors. His abuse of Raphael is his way of reasserting con-
trol (see Cracking Up, Christopher Bollas, 1995, p.170).
Third, the sheer incomprehensibility of the Nazi actions –
the fact that the Holocaust seems to the observer senseless and
arbitrary – shows the observer’s limited capacity to understand
the Nazi mind. Many books explain the Nazis’ motives and cru-
elty, but (thankfully) they can’t make readers take the perspec-
tive of the Nazis or identify with their motives. However, per-
petrators often believe that they have good reasons to act in
what others think of as an evil way, and the Nazis were no excep-
tion. Moreover, the people who took part in that genocide were
32 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019
mostly normal by standard criteria of psychological health. In-
depth interviews and psychological testing revealed no sign of
psychological disturbance.
Fourth, after the evil act, an observer might hope that the per-
petrator will undergo a radical transformation, recognizing at last
the harm he inflicted through the victim’s suffering or death.
Sometimes this might happen, but in many cases the perpetrator
simply continues to blame the victim, or anyway to minimize his
own responsibility. Such was the ‘just following orders’ argument
of Nazi leaders like Eichmann in their war crimes trials. The con-
victed Nazis remained loyal to their past actions, often to their
hatred for the victims, and refused to
acquiesce to the observer’s perception
of the horror. Unfortunately, the
observer’s expectation of repentance
is motivated not by rationally-justified
hopes, but by their need to alleviate
their shock and horror by finding some
recognition within the perpetrator of
the horrendous nature of their acts.
The observer hopes that such recog-
nition might help restore their trust in
the world and in humanity.
These four misplaced perceptions
support the idea that what I’ve been
calling the standard perception of evil
was favored by natural selection over
an accurate and objective perception
of perpetrators. In other words, it’s
an evolved cognitive bias. However,
like many other such cognitive biases,
the way of looking at evil embodied
in those four perceived aspects is not
a design flaw, but rather a positive
design feature of our minds. In terms
of our own survival we are fortunate
to err in this way. If people were to
perceive evildoers in a more ‘objec-
tive’ way – by taking the perpetrator’s
perspective into account, for exam-
ple – they would probably be in
danger. More than anything, the per-
ception of evil involves fear: it signals
a potential threat to the individual or their society. This fear
would arguably be lessened if we were to see things the way the
perpetrator does; it would weaken our defences.
That said, the usual perception of evil is also not without its
dangers. Behind the most horrific violence people have inflicted
on each other there was a claim by the aggressor that the victims
deserved their fate because of their own wickedness. In the years
before the Holocaust, the Nazi campaign of incitement painted
Jews as evil, and as enemies of the German nation. So the normal
perception of evil, so crucial to maintaining the stability and secu-
rity of society, has also contributed to humanity’s worst crimes.
© DR ANER GOVRIN 2019
Aner Govrin is a psychoanalyst and philosopher at Bar-Ilan
University, Israel, and the author of Ethics and Attachment: How
We Make Moral Judgments (Routledge, 2019).

Q uestion of the Month
What is the Third Way?
How to negotiate a path between capitalist & socialist excesses? Each answer
below receives a book. Apologies to the many entrants not included.
n political philosophy a ‘Third Way’ is usually taken to mean
I a position that rejects the extreme views to be found at either
end of the left/right spectrum. It is commonly seen as occupy-
ing a middle ground, rejecting radicalism. Its proponents often
say it offers the best of both worlds, whilst detractors see it, unsur-
prisingly, as the worst of both. Since 1945, the Third Way has
tended to be associated with groups nominally on the left,
although conservative Harold Macmillan in The Middle Way
(1938) advocated a centrist politics that drew upon several ideas,
such as nationalisation, that were usually the preserve of the left.
So far so conventional, but this definition relies on the polit-
ical spectrum being drawn up on a single axis – right (free unfet-
tered market) to left (state control of enterprise). It is possible
to draw other axes of political distinctions, primarily authori-
tarian/libertarian, but also nationalistic/cosmopolitan,
secular/religious, or pluralist/monist. To further complicate the
matter, some parties have different attitudes between home and
foreign affairs, or economic outlook and social outlook. And
why should a Third Way be centrist at all?
I believe Third Way proposals should reject the (monist) idea
that there is one all-embracing solution to the problems of soci-
ety, and instead accept value pluralism as its guiding principle.
Values are vitally important to people, but they can be contra-
dictory and indeed incommensurable. So society often has to
embrace both widescale toleration and oppositional politics in
order to flourish. This does suggest that political extremes are
best avoided, and that some form of inclusive liberal society is
best placed to accommodate as many views as possible. Look-
ing again at some of the pluralist theories that were unfortu-
nately set aside in the earlier days of the socialist movement
might be fruitful. The quaintly named Guild Socialism of
G.D.H. Cole and others, with its radical extension of democ-
racy into many facets of life, comes to mind, alongside Proud-
honist ideas of mutualism and co-operative forms of ownership.
So my Third Way would involve a radical extension of demo-
cratic control into a largely devolved society.
STEVE FOULGER
LEYTON, LONDON
I n the last twenty five years, the ‘Third Way’ has denoted a
distinct political ideology that argues in favour of the free-
market, entrepreneurship, and against the nationalisation of
industries, whilst still endorsing radical policies of social jus-
tice. It is commonly seen as a compromise between right-wing
neoliberalism and leftist social democracy. However, it seems
compromises are fated to be criticised from both sides, and the
Third Way is no exception. The right-wing criticises it by claim-
ing that governmental policies designed to create ‘social justice’
Question of the Month
?
?
?
lead to excessive bureaucracy and taxes whilst stifling enterprise,
causing economic stagnation. Meanwhile, the left often claims
the Third Way does not direct the economy sufficiently well,
leading to huge disparities of wealth and opportunity between
the richest and poorest in society.
Arguably John Rawls offers the closest thing to a theoretical
basis for Third Way values. In his influential book A Theory of
Justice (1971), he put forward a thought-experiment, the ‘Origi-
nal Position’. Imagine, he said, that a society’s values were to be
decided by rational individuals behind ‘a veil of ignorance’ which
would prevent them knowing anything about what their own
place in that society would be, even of their own social status,
gender, ethnicity, etc. Rawls thought that concern for their future
wellbeing would impel them to create a society that was free-
market but with a strong sense of social justice. It would there-
fore outwardly resemble a society modelled upon the Third Way.
Social inequalities such as great wealth would be permitted if
and only if they also benefited the least well off, through high
taxes, or more employment. However, Rawls himself has been
criticised both by those arguing that ‘social justice’ leads to uneth-
ical impositions by governments upon individuals, and by those
who remark upon the potential problems of a society ultimately
established upon self-interest, as opposed to shared social and
ethical values. Nor has ‘Third Way’ ideology appeared overly
successful in practice. Governments who endorsed it (such as
the UK Labour Party under Tony Blair) largely failed to avoid
economic recession after the credit crunch of 2008. Again, opin-
ion is divided whether this is due to excessive government inter-
vention or to endorsing overly free-market economic policies.
It seems Third Way politics are confused, prone to criticism,
and have been largely ineffective. It may be better if their advo-
cates decided to be wholly socially democratic or wholly neolib-
eral instead of trying to integrate such contrasting political ide-
ologies. At least then they would be criticised from just one side
of the political spectrum rather than both.
JONATHAN TIPTON
PRESTON, LANCASHIRE
f only we could ditch the left-right-centre-populist ideologi-
I cal splits and focus on a Third Way based on reasonable
rethinking and strong ethical, humanistic beliefs.
Let us all first agree that the free market concept cannot be
done away with, as it seems to relate to very basic instincts of
human nature – self-interest, competitiveness, and creativity.
Destroy the free markets and the incentive that sparks human
progress is killed. At the same time, it has to be acknowledged
that humanity cannot do without some form of state. History
proves that unregulated markets lead to vast inequalities in wealth
August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 33
 ?
distribution, and this in turn can fuel violent reactions.
? ?
A Third Way would recognise that the right balance ought
to be maintained between markets, the state and the commu-
nity. Risk should be appropriately rewarded, since the economy
needs to be sustained with creativity and self-sufficiency; but not
to the detriment of rewarding hard work. Salaries should be pro-
portionate to the hours worked and responsibilities shouldered,
rather than a form of status signalling. A Third Way would also
address the severe limits to our present democracy. Perhaps the
ship of state can only be steered well by knowledgeable elected
representatives, but there should also be alternative ways for cit-
izens to be involved, consulted, and have a say on political deci-
sions. A Third Way would insist that the key to our wealth and
happiness lies in measures to truly improve quality of life for all,
such as lifelong education, fast transportation, reduction of crime,
lower working hours, and time to relax in natural paradises and
pursue artistic activities. Such an objective can be reached if the
Third Way is based on a philosophy where every human being
is treated with equal dignity and respect. Tolerance of a diver-
sity of views should go hand in hand with J.S. Mill’s Harm Prin-
ciple (people’s freedom should only be limited to prevent them
doing harm to others). Human rights should be based on a strong
ethical system that also addresses the future problems arising as
medical progress keeps overcoming problems of sickness, ageing,
mortality, and reproduction. Our future development has to be
primarily guided by ecology. The environmental destruction
that has been wrought on Earth is the price we have been paying
for freedom and technological progress. When it comes to water,
energy, food, waste, climate, protection of natural resources,
habitat and biodiversity, a Third Way that rises above the pre-
sent ideological divide is urgently called for.
IAN RIZZO
ZABBAR, MALTA
‘Third Way’ between rapacious capitalism and coercive
A communism? The answer is Enlightenment humanism.
This philosophy celebrates the flourishing of individuals, rec-
ognizing that the only thing that can ultimately matter is the
feelings of beings capable of feeling.
An important part of human flourishing is finding meaning.
Most of us want to do that as freely as possible. This doesn’t
mean disconnecting from society. Indeed, being embedded in
social structures is part of how we flourish and find meaning.
So we want a balance between freedom to do our own thing and
the societal ties enabling us to relate to others.
Communism pretty clearly got that balance wrong. Not only
was it overly coercive, it also failed to give people the material
prosperity needed for real flourishing and enjoyment. A free
market economy does do the latter. The past century has seen
around a sixfold increase in the real incomes of average people
worldwide. It wasn’t thanks to socialism. Moreover, free market
economics is not some system dreamed up by ideologues. Rather,
it’s the default way people deal with each other in the absence of
artificial constraints. It’s normal life. Its inherent logic is win-win
– any uncoerced market transaction leaves both parties better off,
or else both would not agree to it. Repeated over and over, that’s
how life improves. The ‘unfettered capitalism’ that’s implied in
the question is a straw-man notion, contradicting other funda-
mental precepts of human society. Thomas Hobbes gave us the
concept of the social contract – the idea (to paraphrase) that we
give up our freedom of predation upon others in exchange for
34 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019
protection against predation by others: hence laws against theft,
murder, and other harms. The same applies to businesses, like-
wise subject to laws or regulations restraining predatory or harm-
ful conduct, including environmental destruction.
Again, the bottom line is to create the societal structures most
conducive to human flourishing. Experience and rationality point
to a society ruled by laws protecting us from harms by others –
including capitalists – while otherwise leaving us as free as possi-
ble: free to pursue economic advantage, which makes society
richer; and free to pursue happiness in our individual ways.
FRANK S. ROBINSON
ALBANY, NY
ccording to Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler in their 1958 book
A The Capitalist Manifesto, the fundamental point at issue between
capitalism and communism is which value is to rule in society. With
capitalism it’s justice (‘What is justly gained is justly held’), with com-
munism it is charity (‘From each according to his ability, to each
according to his need’). In the crunch, capitalism sacrifices charity
to justice, communism sacrifices justice to charity.
A mixed economy represents an effort to have the best of both
worlds. But despite the ongoing efforts of Western governments,
our current version of capitalism has led to what American green
entrepreneur Peter Barnes calls “three pathologies: the destruction
of nature, the widening of inequality, and the failure to promote
happiness despite the pretence of doing so” (Capitalism 3.0: A Guide
to Reclaiming the Commons, 2006). So were the communists right?
No. The form of government best suited to a free society is
democracy, and capitalism is the only economic system compati-
ble with this form of government, as Kelso and Adler show. The
task is to improve capitalism so that the capital is held in ever more
hands and the pillaging of nature is minimized. Barnes proposes
that the next stage of capitalism can achieve this by adding a third
economic sector to the existing private and public sectors. This
new ‘trust sector’ makes use of the ancient concept of legal trusts
to place the various ‘commons’ of the world – land, sea, air, even
culture – in trusts. While the beneficiaries – the citizens – draw
income from the trusts (as Alaskans now draw an annual payment
of petroleum royalties from the Alaska Permanent Fund), the nat-
ural resources in them are protected by the fact that access can be
gained only via the trustees, who are bound by law to act only for
the long-term benefit of the trust’s beneficiaries.
If we wish to live in a society that’s free and just, it will need to
be a capitalist one. The Third Way, then, will need to be the next
version of capitalism, the economic system which has created the
greatest surge of innovation and wealth ever known. And a wealthy
society can afford charity without having to sacrifice justice.
PAUL VITOLS
NORTH VANCOUVER, B.C.
he capitalism expounded by Adam Smith leads to unrestricted
T markets resulting in severe poverty as well as causing devas-
tating changes to the ecosystem including climate change. To be
fair to Smith, he believed that unrestricted markets would favour
smaller businesses, since they would be more innovative and more
nimble to take advantage of opportunities. He didn’t foresee the
lengths to which large companies would go to stifle competition.
Socialist dictatorships fare no better, as they severely dampen the
incentive for people to progress through their own efforts. This
results in economic disaster in which the majority of the popula-
tion suffers hardship or worse, as well doing the ecosystem no
Question of the Month
 ?
favours. However there is a Third Way, outlined by Karl Popper
? ?
he Voluntary Human Extinction Movement is an environ-
in The Open Society and its Enemies (1945), involving piecemeal social
engineering. This started in Bismarck’s Germany, with the wel-
T mental movement that calls for people to abstain from
reproduction to cause the gradual extinction of humanity:
fare state. Ever since, taxes have been used to provide pensions,
healthcare, and support for the unemployed. The level of taxa- The Third Way: Voluntary Human Extinction
tion can be optimised to maximize tax revenue whilst not remov- ‘To be or not to be’
ing incentives. Piecemeal social engineering can continue to be We live to let the petals fall,
used to avert ecological disaster by the application of environ- Of all the bitter almonds
mental economics. The concept of environmental economics Life’s the bitterest of all.
began in the 1920s and was based on the concept of externalities, So let the human gently go
coined in the Nineteenth Century by Jules Dupuit. An ‘external- Into rivers deep with silvery sleep
ity’ is the result of an economic activity on a third party which is Where the world’s dreams flow.
not included in the cost of that activity; for example, when indus- A gradual halt to human birth
trial activity leads to air or water pollution, but the industry does Will reinvigorate the broken Earth.
not pay for this pollution. Neither purely market-orientated eco- Quality of living over quantity of life
nomic systems nor centrally planned economics have historically Existential flowering with the existential knife.
taken much account of externalities. However, piecemeal social Countries, creeds – all cast aside
engineering can take account of them by ensuring that the pol- An end to the great human divide.
luter pays either by taxation or by fines. As a result of legislation, Ecology over industry
gone are the days of smog and smoke from chimneys in the old Agricultural sustainability.
industrial cities of Britain. Economics left to rot
So piecemeal social engineering is the best available model Capital made us lose the plot.
for combating climate change. It can encourage innovations Consumerism lost its shine
without authoritarianism and without unrestricted growth, As did all things divine
which is detrimental to the environment. A renaissance of flourishing yet may come
RUSSELL BERG, MANCHESTER Harmony when man and world are one.
Plastic pollution: there’s a solution
s there a Third Way? Democracy is now under the influence Failed politics: there’s a solution
I of consumerism. Byung-Chul Han’s concept of non-time – the
notion that there are “no longer any dams that regulate, articu-
To war and greed there’s a solution –
A slow extinction revolution.
late or give rhythm to the flow of time” only demonstrates the The Third Way – stop reproducing
incestuous relationship democracy has with capitalism: we merely The Third Way – ‘live long and die’
move from one product to the next in a kind of limbo in which The Third Way – bid this pale blue dot
there is no real beginning or end. We channel our citizenship A voluntary goodbye.
toward consumerism, giving tacit assent to our government to Earth will once again give birth
undergo a process of zoning. As Alain Badiou states, “In entire To life that knows the planet’s worth.
zones of the world (Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, etc.) govern- Slowly concrete turns to dust,
ments are destroyed, wiped out, and the area becomes a looting Slowly cities start to rust,
zone… open to capitalist predators.” He reminds us that “1% of We’ll leave Earth clean, forests green
the global population possess 46% of the available resources while Leave the stars to shine alone unseen.
50% of the global population possess nothing.” These statistics Resource abundance, flowers, trees
have come to represent the paradigm for democracy. An end to corporate dis-ease
The trouble is there seems to be no solution other than Human legacy shall not be
democracy. So for a Third Way, democracy must undergo an On land, sand, sea or stone
evolution in which we address both environmental and human But in the memory of a world
needs. It must replace the effects of hegemony with a global- We briefly once called home.
ized citizenship. Jürgen Habermas writes, “politics must glob-
alize too, in order to rein in the economy. It means expanding BIANCA LALEH
politics beyond the nation state”. This change will require gov- TOTNES, DEVON
ernments and their citizens to bring a reflective attitude to sup-
plant greed and create a system where the redistribution of
wealth and stewardship for nature becomes paramount.
Only through a thoughtful dialogue with citizens can demo- The next question is this: out of the famous thinkers of history,
cratic states create a balanced distribution of wealth with its Who Is The Worst Philosopher? Please give and justify your
implications for a better world. However, to our consternation, answer in less than 400 words. The prize is a semi-random
this evolution has proven to be a long and laborious process.
book from our book mountain. Subject lines should be
Bertrand Russell’s warning should be heeded: “We all have a
marked ‘Question of the Month’, and must be received by
tendency to think that the world must conform to our preju-
dices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and 14th October 2019. If you want a chance of getting a book,
most people would sooner die than think – in fact they do so.” please include your physical address. Submission is
MARK BENNETT, NEWMARKET, ON. permission to reproduce your answer.

Question of the Month August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 35

Brief Lives
Maine de Biran (1766-1824)
Benjamin Bâcle finds Maine de Biran’s idea of the self-willing self to be underrated.
I
f you come across any French person and ask them about
René Descartes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Jean Paul
Sartre, the chances are they’ll say the name rings a bell. If
you ask them about Maine de Biran, first they’ll say
‘Pardon?’, and upon you repeating the three odd words, they’ll
go blank – unless they belong to the chosen few who happen to
have been schooled at the Lycée Maine de Biran in Bergerac. But
you’d have to be pretty lucky to stumble upon them; and, indeed,
to be in a situation where the name ‘Maine de Biran’ would be
likely to occur at all.
The truth is, Biran is not your average bestselling philoso-
pher. Having published very little in his lifetime (29 November
1766–20 July 1824), he rose to only relative philosophical
prominence in the nineteenth century thanks to the posthumous
publication of his extensive manuscripts. In addition, he can be
said to only ever have had one idea, which shapes all of his philo-
sophical considerations in a way that may seem rather repetitive.
But this idea was arguably one of the first dents in the Enlighten-
ment consensus on the need to objectify, categorise and classify
all things on what Michel Foucault referred to as the ‘flat space
of [a] spreadsheet’ (The Order of Things, 1966). Biran forces us to
rethink what we understand by ‘observation’ and ‘facts.’
A Political Life
François-Pierre-Gontier de Biran, known as Maine, was born
into a family of Bergerac notables in 1766. He was to be a close
witness to, and occasionally even an actor in, some of the defining
events of the Revolution of 1789 and its immediate aftermath.
Biran spent most of the Terror in his family property of
Grateloup. He was a member of the Royal Guard from 1785 to
its dissolution in 1792. After the demise of Robespierre in 1794,
Biran was made administrator of the Dordogne by the Conven-
tion. Then after a brief spell as an elected representative in the
Directory in 1797, he again disappeared from the public sphere
until 1802, when he got another chance to make his mark on
local politics in his native Dordogne and Bergerac, mainly in the
latter’s prefectural services. As part of Napoléon Bonaparte’s
imperial Legislative Body from 1812 to the Restoration of the
monarchy in 1814, he made his name by joining a commission
demanding peace, an end to Napoléon’s politics of expansion,
and the respect of individual and political rights. A monarchist
by nurture and by nature, he welcomed the end of Napoléon’s
rule and the return of Louis XVIII (younger brother of Louis
XVI) in 1814, seeing it as a promise of stability. He went on to
represent the Dordogne in the Chamber of Deputies almost
without interruption until his death in 1824.
A keen student of epistemology (theory of knowledge) from
an early age, Biran never ceased to write and debate with his
friends, mentors and protégés throughout his sometimes high-
profile career. Although his perfectionism meant that he could
not bring himself to publish what he often regarded as incom-
plete reflections on the subject, his work was noted and some-
36 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019
times rewarded by prestigious institutions such as the newly
founded ‘Institut Francais’ in 1802, and the academies of Berlin
(in 1807) and Copenhagen (in 1811).
New, Internal Kinds of Facts
As a child of the eighteenth century, Biran was a firm empiricist.
Influenced by the work of Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714-
1780), he initially believed that ideas are the product of sensory
impressions, and that as a result the mind is mostly passive in its
acquisition of knowledge, both of the outside world and of its
own contents. In the 1790s Biran became acquainted with the
Idéologues, a collective headed by Antoine Destutt de Tracy and
Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis. The ambition of the Idéologues
was to map out the birth, life and death of ideas in a way which
would help promote the educative and regenerative work of the
Revolution. Understanding ideas as objects, and minds as mere
receptacles, implied that all of France’s future citizens could be
shaped into a prescribed mould of thought.
Biran was eager to play his part in the cultural aspects of the
revolution, although he had reservations about the regime
change, as he was convinced that legitimacy rested with the King.
In 1802 he published a study of L’influence de l’habitude sur la fac-
ulté de penser (The Influence of Habit on the Faculty of Thinking). In
it he observed that habit had a paradoxical effect on intellectual
operations, making them simultaneously more focused and accu-
rate, and more spontaneous and unconscious.
Biran’s account of the influence of habit on thinking hinted at
the behind-the-scenes work of an active faculty akin to the will,
but he fell short of explaining what this faculty might be or how
it might work. There was a good reason for this. Condillac and
the Idéologues’ empiricist premises could not harbour the notion
of a spontaneously creative will. In a world ruled by physical and
mental cause and effect, nothing can be its own cause – which is
precisely what the will would be if it is to be at all. This dogma
became increasingly frustrating for Biran, who wanted to find a
firm ground for his philosophy – some place where self-con-
sciousness could be originated and chosen by the will instead of
being the mere accidental consequence of mechanically deter-
mined phenomena. This firm ground he eventually found in
himself, in what he called the ‘primitive fact of the intimate
sense’. In short, it was the intimate sense of the effort of will
which made one conscious of oneself.
As an empiricist, Biran was keen to stick to facts. But he soon
came to realise that this did not mean that facts could only be
externally verifiable. Looking inward, he found that what created
the spark of self-consciousness was the confrontation of his own
hyper-organic force (a vital force whose origin was impossible to
ascertain) with the resistance of his own (organic) body or of an
external object. Self-consciousness could only exist if it was being
resisted at the very same time of its occurrence – by the body, or
by an external object: “as soon as the effort unfolds, there is a sub-
ject and an object, each constituted in relation to each other…
 Brief Lives
Maine De Biran
by Clinton Inman, 2019

© CLINTON INMAN 2018 FACEBOOK HIM AT CLINTON.INMAN

PORTRAIT

August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 37

Brief Lives
Without this effort everything is passive and absolute… With it,
everything refers to a person who wants and acts” (Mémoire sur la
décomposition de la pensée, 1805).
So for Biran, self-consciousness was above all the result of an
act of will: an act which he thought could not be accounted for in
the same way as, say, gravity, or the action of one billiard ball on
another. Here Biran managed to still respond to the empiricist
demand that facts be based on experience while undermining the
Enlightenment claim that everything worth knowing was objec-
tifiable, quantifiable, and comparable. The incommunicable
nature of the sense of effort, and the idea, implied in the neces-
sary interdependence of resistance and effort, that self-con-
sciousness is inseparable from otherness, soared beyond the tra-
ditional empiricism favoured by the likes of Condillac, Cabanis,
and Destutt de Tracy.
But Biran went further, arguing that all of our basic ideas of
how the world is regulated – of causality, force, unity, identity,
and permanence, among others – were derived from the primi-
tive fact of the act of self-consciousness. For instance, our gen-
eral idea of causality was abstracted from our sense of being the
cause of an effort when acting. Our ideas of unity, identity, and
permanence were the intellectualised expression of the unity,
identity, and permanence of a self which in its willed effort
recognised itself in the midst of an infinite stream of ever-chang-
ing sensations. The same logic applied to ‘normal’ ideas – of a
tree, a cloud, or a cat, for example. To become easily identifiable
among other sensations as a distinct idea, a sensory impression
had to be actively received by the willing self. Biran’s account of
what regulates our perception was as far removed from
Immanuel Kant’s a priori categories of thought as it was from
David Hume’s argument for the impossibility of proving causal
links. Instead, it was firmly grounded in creative willing.
keep on neglecting what I could be” (Journal, III). This craving
he saw as a mode of the body’s proneness to sensual gratification
– a tendency which inevitably leads one to seek society and to
play all sorts of roles and games, thereby damaging one’s moral
integrity: “Natural passions have their source in organic life and
belong to the animal side of man… Social passions always com-
bine with natural passions and complicate them” (Journal, II).
The Journal also shows how Biran continuously exhorted him-
self to fight off his social passions, to recollect his thoughts and
reunify his self, and how this was helped by the seclusion and
contemplation afforded by his family residence. There the
thinker’s efforts could unfold properly, at last.
This is perhaps one of the most interesting features of Biran’s
will. Nowadays willpower is more often than not associated with
the determination to succeed according to externally established
standards. Biran’s will, by contrast, expressed itself most power-
fully by his shutting the world away and turning inwards.
The Utilitarian Threat
Biran’s emphasis on the conflict between the self and the senses
reflects his temperament and attitude. But rooting his real-life
tensions in a universal physiological and psychological divide
shows that he saw this divide and these tensions as essential to
human experience. This made for fertile ground when it came to
criticising the excesses of a certain kind of empiricism and its moral
applications – so much so that Biran can be credited for providing
us with one of the first philosophical critiques of utilitarianism.
Although no explicit mention of Jeremy Bentham’s (1748-
1832) works is to be found in Biran’s writings, in his Journal he

Mind versus Body in Thought and Life

With the primitive fact of the inner sense, Biran had found his

CARTOON © STEVE DELMONTE 2019 PLEASE VISIT WWW.STEVEDELMONTESTUDIO.COM

fulcrum, his point d’appui. He had also salvaged the mind’s active
nature from the passivity implied by Condillac’s empiricism. But
he had also re-established dualism, by erecting an insurmount-
able barrier between the active self and its ‘passive’ counterpart,
the organic body. In spite of their interdependence, and of the
appropriation of sensations through willed effort, in Biran’s
theory mind and body remain constantly at war. The body con-
stantly threatens to swallow the mind, which in turn only exists
in affirmation against its organic counterpart. This tension
reflects the tension between our social and our personal lives.
Although it started almost accidentally, Biran’s career as a
statesman survived a revolution, an empire, and the restoration
of the monarchy. Behind this apparently successful career, how-
ever, was a man forever torn between his desire to please in the
public sphere, and his hankering after solitude in nature.
Biran’s Journal is an enlightening record of his complex emo-
tional response to public and social life. Throughout its pages he
appears painfully aware that no mark of approval or affection
could ever quench his desperate need for recognition; and yet he
readily acknowledges that he cannot help but act upon that need:
“this is the source of all my sorrows and disappointments in life.
I have always wanted, I still want, to seem what I am not, and

38 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019


makes a number of allusions to some of the core principles of
Bentham’s utilitarianism, and Biran’s philosophy is based on a
partial rejection of the empiricist premises on which that doc-
trine is founded. Bentham wrote that “nature has placed
mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain
and pleasure” (An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Leg-
islation, 1789), and he advocated a moral system directed to the
maximisation of the latter. In doing so he was merely taking the
core empiricist and sensualist premises to their natural conclu-
sions: sensations were the only experiential reality the role of
which everyone could agree on. The new moral order would be
all about collective happiness understood as the generalisation of
the individual search for pleasure, and it did not matter which
pleasure, as long as it did not interfere too obviously with other
individual pursuits of the same kind.
However, for Biran, utilitarian morals were mistaken in that
the empiricist premises on which they were founded were only
partly true. There had to be more to life than pleasure and pain,
if only because the idea of free will (which even Bentham’s
system relied on) means more than being a mere weathervane
blown about by ever-changing sensations. Yet Biran was acutely
aware that for all its wrong assumptions, utilitarian morality
could become a self-fulfilling prophecy, given that there’s always
a “concordance between speculative systems and practical
morals” (Journal, II). With pleasure and pain becoming the car-
dinal points of moral science, people were free to blindly follow
their own impulses to the detriment of others and of their own
fulfilment. This could only lead to stagnant existences, and
unbridled selfishness:
“Those who think that everything in man is founded on feelings of
pleasure and pain, must believe too that the individual is the be all and
end all of his existence: duty is then a word devoid of any meaning, and so
is the idea of the absolute: everything is forever likely to change, along
with place, time and sensitive dispositions.” (Journal, II)
Biran thought that as a result of empiricism and utilitarianism,
his was a time “where generous sentiments [were] practically
extinct in all souls, and where human actions [were] only consid-
ered through the prism of utility or material advantages” (Journal,
I). This was to heap a lot of blame upon those philosophies; but
perhaps he understood utilitarianism as the theoretical justifica-
tion for the nascent capitalism. Biran’s suggested cure for these
ills – moral firmness and established values – may appear rather
conservative to us; but it should be remembered that his basis for
these values was quite original. The immediate apperception of
the self through self-willing effort was where Biran found both
individual moral strength and a reason to respect others, as free
agents engaged in their very own intimate struggle with incessant
natural and social stimuli. His conception of will was thus less an
accompaniment to triumphant economic liberalism than a warn-
ing of and potential tool against some of its most manifest perils.
God and the ‘Third Life’
Biran’s values were initially founded on a generalisation of his
introspective psychology, and as such did not rely on any tran-
scendental truth. Even his monarchism could be said, if not to
Brief Lives
originate, then at least to be consolidated by his belief that the
state, like the individual, needed to organise itself around princi-
ples of unity and permanence.
Still, as the vicissitudes of life started to take their toll, Biran
became increasingly aware that his ‘firm ground’ of the self-will-
ing self was not enough to yield a peaceful and rewarding life.
Free will was not a given, but needed to be constantly reaffirmed
in the face of countless physical ailments and social disappoint-
ments. There is no end to this balancing act. This led Biran to
seek peace and contentment in an experience in the inner self
coming from a higher source, and for Biran there was no mistak-
ing that this higher source was God. But here again, Biran was
intent on accounting for the phenomenon in a philosophical way:
“Until now, I have tried to establish a metaphysical theory by consult-
ing my intimate sense and paying close attention… to all conse-
quences derived from the facts of this intimate sense… If I find God
and the true laws of the moral order, it will be pure happiness, and I
shall be more credible than those who, starting from prejudices, only try
and establish the latter through their theories.” (Journal, I)
Biran’s last decade was to be dedicated to ‘finding God’, both
personally and metaphysically. By the end of his life, he had dis-
covered that beyond the ‘first’ and the ‘second’ lives of man (the
animal/sensitive and the human/rational aspects respectively),
was a third life, characterised by a calm and contentment which
could only be the act of a higher power.
The Afterlife of the Self-Willed Self
Maine de Biran was both a man of the eighteenth century in his
attempt to organise his thought in a systematic and transparent
way, and a man of the nineteenth century in his subversion of clas-
sical empiricism through an acknowledgment of the most funda-
mental human experience. While his ideas were coloured by an
undeniable traditionalism when it came to morals and politics, he
cleared the way for the emergence of modern philosophies such
as French Eclecticism (Victor Cousin’s attempt to bridge the gap
between Cartesian rationalism and empiricism), French Spiritu-
alism (culminating in Henri Bergson’s philosophy of mind and
creativity), and last but not least, French existentialism.
When he died in 1824 after years of ill-health, Biran was hailed
as ‘our mentor’ by Pierre Paul Royer-Collard, and even ‘our
Kant’ by Jules Lachelier. But some hundred and fifty years later,
F.C.T. Moore remarked that “Maine de Biran is an author almost
without critics, indeed, almost without readers in the English
philosophical tradition” (The Psychology of Maine de Biran, 1970).
The situation does not seem to have changed much. It may pri-
marily be down to the fact that there are only a few available
English translations of Biran’s writings (his work on The Relation-
ship between the Physical and the Moral in Man was translated and
published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2016). But even in France,
although a handful of academics have devoted their careers to
editing and analysing his works, Biran remains largely unknown –
as though notoriety, just like freedom, was bound to escape him.
© DR BENJAMIN BÂCLE 2019
Benjamin Bâcle is Senior Teaching Fellow in French at University
College London.
August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 39
 Tidying Up With Socrates
Freya Mobus compares Socrates’ method of enquiry
with a fashionable way to achieve domestic harmony.
et me present to you the ultimate life-coaching team: to be? Their methods help us to become a better version of our-

L Marie Kondo and Socrates. Marie Kondo, the mod-

ern Japanese consultant devoted to uncluttering our
households; Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher
devoted to uncluttering our minds. If we open ourselves to their
methods of tidying up, we will live a happier life, they promise.
Kondo’s ‘KonMari’ method, presented in her Netflix show
based on her bestseller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
(2014), and Socrates’ ‘Elenchus’ method, presented in Plato’s
dialogues starring him, work in similar ways, although Kondo
is much more popular with her clients. (Eventually, the Athe-
nians got so sick of Socrates’ attempts at tidying up their minds
that they executed him.)
Let’s take as our life-coaching client a character from Plato’s
Republic – Thrasymachus, who claims that only weak simpletons
believe that being moral is good. Let’s assume that in addition
to his cluttered mind, Thrasymachus also has a cluttered home
– for he who is untidy in one area of life is likely to be untidy in
another. Our life-coaching team of Kondo/Socrates gets to work.
First, let’s tidy up Thrasymachus’ house according to the Kon-
Mari method. Focus on one category; for example, clothes: get
all your clothes together and take stock. Seeing the big pile of
togas, tunics, and sandals, Thrasymachus realizes that he has too
many. But which items should he get rid of? Marie Kondo’s advice:
pick something you feel strongly about – something you defi-
nitely do (or do not) want to keep, and move on from there. Go
through each item one by one and ask yourself: does this item
make me happy? If not, get rid of it. Only keep things that ‘spark
joy’. When you’re done, store your clothes in such a way that you
can remember where they are and access them more easily in the
future (fold them nicely and store them in designated boxes).
Now let’s tidy up Thrasymachus’ mind according to Socrates’
Elenchus method. Focus on one question; for example, ‘What is
PLEASE VISIT TOONOUTLET.COM
selves and to build a home – physical or intellectual – that makes
us and the people around us happy.
Clutter is often a source of tension. When you cannot find
your belt in the morning and blame it on your spouse, your day
starts with an argument. Similarly, a political debate about a con-
troversial topic such as immigration is likely to turn hostile if the
debaters have cluttered thinking about it and are unwilling to
abandon any of their beliefs. It is not surprising that many of
Marie Kondo’s clients have reported that their lives have become
more harmonious after they KonMari’ed their homes. As for the
harmonious effect of an uncluttered mind, just look at Socrates
in his last hours before his execution: Plato describes him as
unconcerned about his impending death. What kept Socrates at
peace is precisely that he had let go of the belief that death is bad.
But, a skeptic might wonder, what about items or beliefs that
I’ve inherited from someone dear to me? Shouldn’t I keep the scarf
my grandma gave me for my birthday, even though it’s really not
my style? Here, Marie Kondo’s advice is to give the present a chance.
Wear the scarf at least once; but if it doesn’t spark joy, let go of it.
Socrates is likely to agree. If your grandma used to tell you that eat-
ing bread and butter with every meal will give you extra energy and
stamina, give it a shot. Treat this belief as a hypothesis; but if you
can’t defend it, let it go. We can remember and cherish our loved
ones without holding on to unwanted inherited items or beliefs.
Our life-coaching dream team Kondo/Socrates leave Thrasy-
machus with one more piece of advice for the future: tidy regu-
larly! Get into a habit of examining both your beliefs and posses-
sions. That way, you will live a happier, more harmonious life.
© DR FREYA MOBUS 2019
Freya Mobus is an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Loyola
University, Chicago. She received her PhD from Cornell University.

morality?’ Next, get all your beliefs about morality out into the
open. Once Thrasymachus has taken stock of his beliefs, he real-
izes that some of them are incompatible. For instance, he believes
that when I act morally, I benefit someone else; and he also
believes that when I act morally, I may not benefit someone else.
So he has to get rid of some beliefs. But which ones? Socrates’
advice: pick a belief you feel very strongly about – one you can
© RON COLEMAN 2019

defend best – and hold on to that. Then go through each belief

one by one and ask yourself: why do I hold this belief? Only
hold on to beliefs you can defend. When you’re done, store your
beliefs in such a way that you can access them more easily in the
future. You can do this by, for example, connecting each belief
CARTOON

with an explanation or reason for why you hold it, and so build
a network of beliefs. As Socrates says, ‘Tie your beliefs down’.
Kondo’s KonMari method and the Socratic Elenchus both
inspire self-reflection. During the process of uncluttering, you
are encouraged to envision your future self. Which items/beliefs
do you want to bring into your future life? Who do you want

40 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019


Remembering Mary Midgley:
A Centenary Celebration
DEAR READERS: Many of you will
remember Mary Midgley, either
from her wonderful philosophy
books or from her numerous articles
in Philosophy Now. In September she
would have been a hundred years
old. Her sons are organising a
Centenary Celebration, including
philosophy talks. It will be held in
London’s Conway Hall on 7 Sept
2019, 12:00-4:00pm.
For further information and to reserve
a place, please email David Midgley
on davidmidgley02@gmail.com
The Sound of No Hands Clapping
DEAR EDITOR: Karen Parham’s article
‘Meditating with Descartes’, Issue 132
mentions the famous koan “What is the
sound of one hand clapping?” My
answer is, “The cacophony of silence”. I
feel that I am now fit to be fast-tracked
to a Zen master-hood if I am the first to
make this reply; if not, my apologies for
unconscious plagiarism. In either case I
shall be enlightened. Perhaps I gained
my inspiration from P.G. Wodehouse,
of his golfer: “The least thing upset him
on the links. He missed his short putts
because of the uproar of the butterflies
on the adjoining meadows.”
One of my favourite koans is of the
Master Tsing Hwa. He fell into a ravine
when a wooden bridge collapsed, and he
was injured. On recovery he would not
walk across any wooden structure, even
the floor of the temple. Asked when he
would use a wooden bridge again, he said
“When it spans a solid void.” Then he
asked his disciple Boh Da what can be
more real than a fictional koan written by
a sceptic? Boh Da was enlightened, and
left the monastery to become financial
advisor to the Zhou Dynasty’s Yu Wang
during the last decade of that unfortunate
potentate’s reign.
Are these Western koans?: ‘Can real-
ity be doubted unless it is real?’; or
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 rick.lewis@philosophynow.org
Keep them short and keep them coming!
‘Doubt is doubted; be unsure of the sure
and unsure of the unsure’; or again,
‘Failure to succeed is failure, but is suc-
ceeding to fail success?’ Charles Lamb
said that “A pun is a pistol fired off in
the ear, not a feather to tickle the intel-
lect.” Koans do both, since they are
unanswerable riddles wrapped up in
paradox, seductively devoid of meaning
intellectually and emotionally. But then,
in Zen, pointlessness is the point. Then
again, I could make a point of not mak-
ing a point of not being a follower of
Zen – or not, as the case may be.
Is ‘I think therefore I am’ a koan? I
think not. To be able to think is an
attribute of human existence and so this
well-worn phrase is a tautological state-
ment, not paradoxical wordplay. But
Descartes’ discussions of mind/soul are
unsatisfactory. It seems to me he pre-
judged the outcome of his theses.
Leaving out these demands of his
faith, I read Descartes as a materialist but
perhaps not a good physiologist, even by
the standards of his time.
DR DAVID MARJOT, SURREY
Minding the Machines
DEAR EDITOR: In his article in Issue 132,
Paul Conrad Samuelsson thinks it’s
likely that machines will gain conscious-
ness, and that this is the case regardless
of whether consciousness is physical or
not. I disagree on both points. A
machine such as a computer or android
has been designed so that its physical
components will cause it to behave as it
does, the program itself forming part of
this physical cause. Therefore, it seems
irrefutable to conclude that what causes a
machine’s behaviour is physical. This is
not to rule out the possibility of machine
consciousness, but there seems no justifi-
cation for actually believing there might
be such a thing. We would not normally
think there’s any consciousness involved
in a simple electrical circuit which is con-
nected to a light bulb, and it should be
remembered that a computer is internally
August/September 2019 l Philosophy Now 41
the equivalent of lots of those circuits,
each performing a simple activity.
The situation is quite different when it
comes to a being known to have con-
sciousness. I know I have a consciousness.
I also know that this consciousness does
not have the same properties as anything
physical. Therefore, I think that unlike
the case of a machine, there’s no possibil-
ity that I am a purely physical system.
I expect that part of the reason why
many people believe in machine con-
sciousness is that they’re materialists –
they believe that consciousness consists
of physical things such as electrical
activity of the brain or responses to
stimuli. Some machines receive stimuli,
causing electrical activity in their cir-
cuitry, this then causing physical
responses which resemble intelligent
behaviour. So, some people believe that
in terms of their definition of ‘con-
sciousness’, such machines have con-
sciousness. However, on the contrary,
where there are only physical processes,
there is no consciousness. In summary, I
am not persuaded that machines will
have consciousness.
PETER SPURRIER, HALSTEAD, ESSEX
DEAR EDITOR: Avoiding glossy descrip-
tions of the robot cars, robot dogs, and
robot welders which have appeared in
recent years, only one brand is named in
Richard Baron’s review in Issue 132 of
Living with Robots: Paro, a toy seal which
responds to its name. I’d have liked to
learn a little about Paro’s cost and relia-
bility, and, like the robot in Lost in Space,
any ability it might have to flail mechan-
ical arms while warning owners of
‘DANGER! EXTREME DANGER!’
All the ideas in Living with Robots stem
from a core theory, that we should no
longer think of consciousness only in
terms of an internal mind which manu-
factures thoughts and emotions and then
launches the consequences on an exter-
nal world, but in terms of the relation-
ships that agents have with the world.
Letters
Unfortunately, the authors’ idea, quoted
by Baron, that the mind is “neither in the
brain, nor in the head... but in the rela-
tions that obtain between epistemic
agents” upset my modest confidence that
I’d grasped the book’s core theory. To
recap on the logic of the book’s central
theory via a catchphrase from the 1960s
TV robot: This does not compute.
NEIL RICHARDSON, KIRKHEATON
Self Representations
DEAR EDITOR: I enjoyed the article,
‘Humanity, Metaphor & the Recursive
Mind’ in PN 130 and wrote this poem.
Hope you like it. I have a book of poetry,
called The Last Hint of Epiphany, available
through Amazon.
A Mirror Cracked
Is it a metaphor
you are after?
Or perhaps
a recursive thought?
Embedded in your own
private discourse.
My mind is racing!
Is this a mirror
on our true selves?
Dendrites dancing,
the visual delight
of synaptic impression.
Yet, metaphors are slow
and static.
Not pictures moving.
Welcoming and warmly inviting
unless...
they take their own course.
Fire imagination
cut their own recursive thoughts
reflection
refraction
a splintering and shattering
- a mirror cracked!
GEOFF JOHNSTON, SASKATCHEWAN
DEAR EDITOR: Issue 130 was a great
issue. Frank Robinson’s article provoked
some thoughts. Self, Mind, Brain: are
these all the same? Why must there be
one unquestionable place where self
resides, and must it have one specific
path? Could self be the result of culture
or specific circumstances, the order of
their presentation derived from our cul-
tural past? Too much brain is spent on
the need for a simple answer to a most
complex issue.
Perhaps self is an accident of
time/space. Could it not be that one
42 Philosophy Now l August/September 2019
change in my past and I might have been
a different self? I am 87 and have been
married 61 years; my wife claims she has
been married to five different men.😇
If we are trying to create a still picture
that we can place in one place, it will
never happen. Myself is throughout me,
and it is a moving picture.
WILLIAM STUART
The Sense of Perception
DEAR EDITOR: I would like to make a few
points regarding ‘Locke’s Question to
Berkeley’ in Issue 131. First, I think it’s
important to pin down what we mean by
‘perception’. The author appears to find
Berkeley’s argument (‘To be is to be per-
ceived’) implausible since scientific instru-
ments can detect various properties of
matter which cannot be discerned by the
naked human senses. Indeed, the underly-
ing molecular structure of an apple can-
not be discerned from merely tasting it or
examining it within our hands. However,
scientific instruments are designed to
reveal data to those very senses. It is our
eyes that view the atoms on the screen of
an electron microscope. As such, the ulti-
mate nature of the apple, as far as we can
know it, is still within the grasp of our
perception. How could it be otherwise?
Our brains only have the senses with
which to judge. (The only caveat may be
in the theoretical domain, with mathe-
matics. But here, very often, as with
String Theory and others, the conclu-
sions are rendered untestable.)
Is there any reality beyond what our
experiments might probe? We don’t
know; perhaps we never will. The apple
can either be reduced to mystery, or kept
within what we can know via experiment.
I am certainly open to mystery and spec-
ulation, but as far as we know so far, the
senses are the only way for the human
mind to understand reality.
ANTHONY MACISAAC,
INSTITUT CATHOLIQUE DE PARIS
Perspectives on Visions
DEAR EDITOR: In his article ‘Beauty ver-
sus Evil’ (PN 132), Stuart Greenstreet
makes the assertion that Leni Riefen-
stahl’s 1935 film Triumph of the Will is
‘flawed as art’ because it’s a work of Nazi
propaganda. His argument is that art is
inevitably tied to moral attitudes and val-
ues so judgments about it cannot be con-
fined to matters of formal brilliance, how-
ever spectacular or overpowering. But
isn’t this going too far in the direction of
moralism? In practice, aren’t we always
making a distinction between moral judg-
ments and judgments of talent and skill,
both in the field of art and in everyday
life? A star footballer, say, may have unde-
sirable personal qualities and moral fail-
ings aplenty, but this doesn’t stop us
admiring his brilliant skills on the pitch.
We don’t say his performance is flawed by
his character, or that he’d be a better
player if he were a better human being.
It’s surely the same in the world of art,
where plenty of great works have been
produced by degenerates. As Oscar Wilde
said of Thomas Wainewright, the tal-
ented writer, artist, and murderer, the fact
of his being a poisoner is “nothing against
his prose.” So regarding Triumph of the
Will, it’s surely possible to appreciate its
originality, technical virtuosity and power
of presentation, though knowing that it’s
a work of Nazi propaganda and regretting
that Leni Riefenstahl didn’t devote her
genius to better causes. In this way it can
be seen as something morally bad but
artistically impressive, a striking example
of propagandist art in a long line of pro-
paganda poems, paintings, operas, etc,
which a strict moralism would condemn
as flawed, but which are widely admired.
ANTHONY KEARNEY, LANCASTER
Ethics, Actions & Effects
DEAR EDITOR: In PN 132 Michael Jor-
dan asks why it may be right to divert a
runaway trolley onto a track where it will
kill only one workman, not five, but wrong
to kill a pizza delivery man to give his
organs to five patients needing transplants:
1. Killing the delivery man would be
murder. Diverting the trolley would not.
2. As Aquinas said, actions which do much
good but some unavoidable harm (divert-
ing the trolley) are widely acceptable, but
it’s very problematic to perform intrinsi-
cally bad actions (killing the pizza guy) in
the hope of achieving a greater good.
3. The pizza man’s attacked physically, but
there’s no contact with the man on the
track. It is natural that doing the former
should feel worse than doing the latter.
ALLEN SHAW, LEEDS
No Marks For Marx?
DEAR EDITOR: It was disturbing to read
a major part of Issue 131 devoted to Karl
Marx, who formulated the most econom-
ically failed, wrong, and lethal body of
ideas in history. A favorable or neutral

discussion or weak criticism of Marxism
is as absurd as an agreeable treatise on a
geocentric universe or the flat Earth. It
should be unequivocally condemned as
the anti-human dogma it is.
In his editorial, Grant Bartley set the
tone for the issue by commenting on that
well-known quotation attributed to Marx
but which he did not originate: “I still
think ‘From each according to his ability,
to each according to his needs’ is a great
social ideal, even if it sometimes seems
impractical in our corrupt cosmos.” What
makes the statement great, Mr Bartley?
What exactly would make it practical? It’s
a recipe for and a sanction of universal
larceny – one of the lesser perversions in
Marx’s dystopian doctrine.
Writers in Philosophy Now have
lamented the decline of philosophy in
contemporary society while ironically
advancing it further toward irrelevance.
MICHAEL H. DAVISON,
AUTHOR OF AMERICA’S SUICIDE
DEAR EDITOR: In Issue 131, Karl Popper
is quoted as saying that ‘Marx failed’.
But Popper is wrong! The modern limit-
ing of the absolute power of the state and
market has mainly come about due to the
fears of the Victorian ruling class that not
reforming would fuel revolutionary
socialist movements. Ruling classes of the
world, unite in reducing the numbers
desperate for revolution! Strengthen lib-
eral democracy so you can enjoy your
wealth safe in your offshore tax havens!
JASON PALMER, KENT
DEAR EDITOR: I enjoyed your features on
my (distant) relative Karl Marx in PN 131.
However, I’d like to suggest that despite
Professor Qvortrup’s assertion that
“Marx rarely dished out complements”,
that ‘Marx and Engels’ is in fact a com-
plement par excellence. He was, no doubt,
less forthcoming with compliments.
I would get out more, but I’m still
working my way through Das Kapital.
EZRIEL CARLEBACH, LONDON
Panned Spiritism
DEAR EDITOR: Does Steve Taylor
(Issue 131) really expect anyone to take
his panspiritism seriously? Isn’t it
quackery? What quacks do, be they
medical, religious or psychological
quacks, is invent a set of metaphysical
concepts, imbue them with the magical
quality of being able to interact with
the physical world (for which there is
no evidence), and then present them to
the gullible as the answer to something
troubling. In this vein, Taylor claims
that in addition to our individual con-
sciousnesses there exists a ‘fundamental
consciousness’ that both generates mat-
ter and operates in matter. It gives
‘internal consciousness’ to living things,
but exists as an ‘external consciousness’
in things like rocks and rivers. It is sup-
posed to be an answer to the mind-body
problem and shed light on conscious-
ness. It does neither!
ROB WILKINS, PERTH
p.s. You might ask Richard Dawkins to
comment on Taylor’s take on evolution.
DEAR EDITOR: I have two questions for
Steve Taylor (PN Issue 131) regarding
his article ‘What is Panspiritism?’:
(1) Where is your evidence?, and
(2) What is panspiritism’s ultimate aim?
TERRY GRAPENTINE, ANKENY, IOWA
On Failing To Be Magnanimous
DEAR EDITOR: Raymond Tallis (‘On
Failing to be a Philosopher’, Issue 131)
claims that the vast majority of the pop-
ulation choose not to be philosophers. I
must disagree. Is there anyone who does
not give thought to what is right and
wrong and undertake activity in ethics?
In 2018, 5.7 million people visited just
one art gallery, the Tate Modern. Were
these people going for some other rea-
son than to explore aesthetics? Concerns
over ‘fake news’ exercise minds in the
field of epistemology.
I accept that the vast majority of peo-
ple do not use the technical language of
academic philosophy. Equally, I accept
that the names, let alone the ideas, of
great philosophers are relatively
unknown. But one of the great beauties
of philosophy is that anyone can partici-
pate profitably with little or no prepara-
tory knowledge. It would be rather elitist
to discount the philosophical activity of
most people because it’s quality did not
reach some arbitrary threshold.
MICHAEL SHAW, HUDDERSFIELD
DEAR EDITOR: While empathetic with a
lot of Raymond Tallis’s ‘On Failing to be
a Philosopher’ (Issue 131), I’m confused
as to how he pinpoints the emergence of
‘post-truth’ politics to postmodernism,
and indicts it as the cause of such authori-
tarian manifestations as Trump. Half-
August/September 2019 l Philosophy Now 43
Letters
truths, mythologies, and outright falsifica-
tions have been the tool of authoritarian
regimes since the beginning of civiliza-
tion. And these things were clearly at
work in the Nazi Party, which is what the
thinkers he attacks (being mainly French)
were basically responding to. I hope he’s
not going down the same path as Alan
Sokal and Jean Bricmont in Fashionable
Nonsense. As one critic of that book
pointed out, the authors’ dismissal of
Deleuze basically consisted of repeating
that they did not understand him. As
Barthes parodied in Mythologies: “I do
not understand; therefore, you are igno-
rant.” I have a little more respect for
Tallis’s intellect than that. My guess is
that he is taking what they say too liter-
ally. He, in his scientific mindset fails to
see these thinkers as inhabiting the no-
man’s land between science and litera-
ture, leaning towards literature. And I can
assure him that most people, even rela-
tivistic hippies, know better than to step
in front of a moving bus, regardless of
how much Baudrillard, Derrida or
Deleuze they read.
I bring this up, Dear Editor, not to
defy an established Philosophy Now icon,
but to address a misdirect. By focusing
on a group of thinkers who happened to
engage in a little conceptual play we are
distracted from our very real problems:
the dissemination of information via tech-
nology, and the slow erosion of editorial
authority that has resulted; the emergence
of an oligarchy via globalism; and the very
fact that you cannot have a handful of
people feasting at the table whilst every-
one else fights for the crumbs, and not
expect the problems we’re having.
D.E. TARKINGTON, NEBRASKA
Ethical Chainsaws and Motorbikes
DEAR EDITOR: Philosophy will never die.
We can’t let those flat-minded, self-deny-
ing neuroscientists take away our interest
in life. You don’t have to have set foot in
an academy to philosophise. You don’t
need to have a PhD to have a symposium.
The mechanical and chemical determinist
is no fun at all. He, she or it can stay in
their hermetically-sealed, temperature
controlled lab peering down the micro-
scope of their fundamentals. We’ll be jug-
gling ethical chainsaws riding a Harley on
a existential highwire in or out of univer-
sity. Philosophy isn’t even sick.
KATE STEWART
BELLTHORPE, QLD, AUSTRALIA
 Ian Robinson has a brief look at the Dalai Lama’s brief
message to the world, Amber Edwards considers a new

Books understanding of misogyny, and Paul McGavin finds help

in understanding ignorance in Understanding Ignorance.

An Appeal to the to counter this is to “sharpen our awareness” He practices meditation four hours a day,
World by His Holiness through “more listening, more contempla- and claims: “Through intensive meditation,
tion, more meditation.” He leads by example. we will find our enemies can become our best
the Dalai Lama
IT IS WITH CONSIDERABLE
diffidence and not a little
humility that I embark on
a review of a book written by the Dalai Lama.
It’s a bit like reviewing God, or the Queen.
This is a man who has spent many hours
every day for over seventy years meditating
on the human condition, contemplating the
complexity and simplicity of the world, seek-
ing out the truth of existence. Who am I to sit
in judgement on his conclusions?
Given this, it comes as a great relief to
discover that in this book the Dalai Lama
reaches exactly the same conclusion I have.
That conclusion is stated baldly in the open-
ing paragraph: “For thousands of years,
violence has been committed and justified in
the name of religion. … For that reason I say
that in the twenty-first century, we need a
new form of ethics beyond religion. I am
speaking of a secular ethics.” Amen to that!
While there is nothing particularly orig-
inal in this notion, what is startling is that a
recognition of the limitations of religion and
a valorising of secular ethics should come
from such a prominent religious leader. It
would be refreshing if the leaders of other
faiths could see beyond the confines of their
own religions and work towards finding a
basis for a common ethics that could help
bring peace and prosperity to the world.
For the Dalai Lama, the basis of such an
ethics is “our fundamental human spiritual-
ity”; that is, “the affinity we humans have for
love, benevolence, and affection – no matter
what religion we belong to.” He points out
that: “we are born without religion, but not
without the basic need for compassion…
Regardless of whether or not we belong to
a religion, we all have a fundamental and
profoundly human wellspring of ethics
within ourselves. We need to nurture that
shared ethical basis.” There is no doubt that
such an outcome is fervently to be desired.
However the crucial question is, how do we
get there from here?
The Dalai Lama recognises that the world
is currently plagued by “egoism, nationalism
and violence”, and argues that the best way
The Dalai Lama by Darren McAndrew, 2019

44 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019 Book Reviews


friends.” Hmmm… It’s certainly interesting
to imagine what the word would be like if
everyone spent four hours (or even just one
hour) meditating each day. In a First World
dominated by commercial imperatives, and
a Third World dominated by survival imper-
atives, this practice, however meritorious,
seems unlikely to become a mass movement.
But each person is entreated to individually
begin the transformation in their own life. In
this regard, His Holiness enlists the well-
known adage: ‘Be the change you want to see
in the world’. (He misattributes the quote to
Mahatma Gandhi. The first verified articu-
lation of it was in 1974 by US educator
Arleen Lorrance, who wrote, “be the change
you want to see happen.” The closest Gandhi
ever came to it was in 1913, when he wrote,
“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies
in the world would also change.”)
The Dalai Lama’s appeal to the world for
secular ethics is rounded out with timely
entreaties to take climate change seriously,
and for arms control and disarmament.
Nevertheless the entire statement takes up
only seven pages. While this is a beautifully
succinct and articulate expression of the Dalai
Lama’s thesis, it does not a book make. To
expand the tome into publishable length, a
long interview with the Dalai Lama by
German writer Franz Alt is included. This
interview is a good encapsulation of all the
Tibetan leader’s key ideas on the principle
topics that have concerned him over the
years. They range from the sublime (spiritu-
ality, compassion, happiness) to the pressing
(the refugee crisis, gender equality – he agrees
the next Dalai Lama could be a woman – and
the future of Tibet) to the mundane (Donald
Trump). If you want an excellent summary of
his wide-ranging thought, you could not find
a better source than this.
This is not a long book, but its merit is in
quality rather than quantity. The Dalai
Lama is one of the seminal thinkers of our
time, and this book demonstrates time and
time again why his ideas are always worth
attending to in so many areas of human
endeavour.
© IAN ROBINSON 2019
Ian Robinson, President Emeritus of the Rationalist
Society of Australia, has been a philosophy tutor at
the University of Melbourne, and was given his
personal meditation mantra during a one-to-one
audience with the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
• An Appeal to the World: The Way to Peace in a
Time of Division, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, with
Franz Alt, William Collins, 2017, 126 pages, ISBN
978-0-00-827842-7
Book Reviews
Down Girl
by Kate Manne
DOWN GIRL BY KATE
Manne is, as far as I know,
the first treatment of misogyny by an
analytic feminist philosopher (as distinct
from a continental feminist social theorist).
It provides a fresh interpretation of the
concept, restating what misogyny is and
what it consists of, and constructs a well-
reasoned argument on this idea.
Manne is an assistant professor of philos-
ophy at Cornell University. Her main aim in
this book is to develop an understanding of
the root and nature of misogyny. She does
this by first deconstructing the traditional or
dictionary definition of misogyny; namely, a
hatred of women. Instead Manne talks of the
demeaning and shameful way in which
women are treated, that includes elements of
hostility and aggression, as misogyny. The
book distinguishes misogyny from sexism,
and helps to dispel some troubling misunder-
standings of ‘misogynist extremism’ seen in
public life and politics, by calling into ques-
tion the typical responses towards such cases.
Manne argues that misogyny must have a
dependence on patriarchy, either existing
within a current patriarchal society or else
having a historical connection with one.
Therefore, she examines patriarchy’s under-
lying assumption of gender relations,
whereby women are ‘givers’ of so-called
‘feminine-coded goods’, such as love, care,
attention, and support, and men are entitled
to take such goods to enhance their position
of privilege, and will create conflict when
women violate these expectations. This
model of patriarchy sets the context for
Manne's argument. As a woman, it was possi-
bly the most relatable part of the book for me.
One of the most common responses to
crimes against humanity is the humanist one
of arguing that such behaviour stems from the
failure of some to recognise others as fellow
human beings. This is commonly heard in
cases of misogynist violence, prompting
questions of why women are such easy targets,
and why they’re not automatically seen as
human beings. Manne outlines five common
claims of humanism which highlight how
men are psychologically able to behave in a
misogynistic manner by reducing women to
objects, making their victims effectively inhu-
man and thereby relieving the men of any
guilt or moral tension. This attitude also
helps to spawn an ideology about women
which is disseminated throughout society so
that it comes to seem normal (which also
August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 45
Books
explains why women might themselves exer-
cise misogynist behaviour).
Manne, however, finds fault with this
argument. She claims that it rests on a
common mistake: that of automatically
attributing man’s inhumanity to man to a
dehumanizing psychological attitude,
coupled with the idea that the very recogni-
tion of humanity in another person means
seeing shared characteristics that make them
more relatable. On the contrary, says
Manne, seeing shared characteristics could
be potentially threatening, and dangerous
insofar as it could create hostile dispositions
that may compete with the capacity for
empathy. Manne concludes that the human-
ist outlook does not explain misogyny.
There must be additional factors at play
which give rise to misogynistic motivations,
such as political ideologies or a sense of enti-
tlement. For example, seeing someone as
your enemy creates a motivation to try to
harm or even destroy them.
The book covers the range of topics you
would expect to see in any feminist text on
gender relations, such as abortion, family
annihilation, and sexual objectification.
This helps to highlight the prevalence of
misogyny in society. However, Manne also
recognises cases of institutionalised misog-
yny that might not be as obvious, such as
accounts of injustice whereby women’s
testimonies are not given due consideration
or they are not taken seriously as victims of
crime. This provides a good link to her
discussion of victimhood and the hostile
attitudes victims face through micro-
aggressions which inevitably build up and
harm members of harried social groups.
Manne provides contemporary case studies
to further support her analysis and her
conception of misogyny, making frequent
reference to the Isla Vista killings, Donald
Trump's presidential administration, and
the serial rapist Daniel Holtzclaw, amongst
others. These case studies are revisited
throughout the book, and while they do
provide an excellent framework through
which to view misogyny, a more diverse
range of examples would have strengthened
the argument and made for a more interest-
ing and convincing read.
One of the most insightful parts of the
book is Manne’s coining of the term himpa-
thy, describing excessive sympathy towards
male perpetrators of sexual violence (which
might be characterised by some as ‘business
as usual’). Himpathy tends to be directed
towards white privileged ‘golden boys’
deemed incapable of misogynistic behaviour
 Books
and/or crimes of sexual violence. Manne
likens this to Hannah Arendt’s findings in
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banal-
ity of Evil (1963), and explains that we need
to recognise the banality of misogyny and
accept that the misogynist need not neces-
sarily be a monster or a caricature.
The book covers a diverse range of
concepts to build a persuasive argument for
the nature and characteristics of misogyny,
providing a comprehensive understanding of
the term from a philosophical point of view.
However, Manne only touches on misogy-
noir and purposely omits transmisogyny. She
frequently comments on how certain issues
are beyond her paygrade and are therefore
not discussed. Rather than limiting herself to
the stance of a (self-professed) highly privi-
leged white middle class, het, cis, non-
disabled woman, she might have found that
incorporating some different identity politics
enabled her to present a fuller picture. The
same can also be said regarding the assump-
tion the author makes that her readers will
have a philosophical background, whenever
she references fallacies and other philosoph-
ical concepts with no further explanation.
The book also rather ironically lacks a certain
amount of criticism of social hierarchies and
systems of power.
Although it’s a dense text, Down Girl is an
interesting read for anybody wanting to
know more about social inequality. The
book is designed so that readers can
approach each chapter independently,
although it is questionable as to how success-
MARCH FOR OUR LIVES, PORTLAND, OREGON, 2018 © SARAHMIRK. CC BY-SA 4.0
46 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019
ful this structure is, since each chapter adds
to the overall argument. Nevertheless, it
provides a good understanding of misogyny
using current and prominent case studies,
such as the misogynist behaviour Donald
Trump exerted towards Hilary Clinton. It
will make its readers critically question
gender relations and stir a productive anger,
encouraging them to do something about
inherently misogynistic systems of power.
© AMBER EDWARDS 2019
Amber Edwards is a librarian working at an inter-
national school in Rome. It's a good bit warmer
than Aberdeen, where she studied Philosophy.
• Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, by Kate
Manne, 2017, OUP, 368 pages, $27.95, ISBN 978-
0190604981827842-7
Understanding Ignorance
by Daniel R. DeNicola
THIS IS AN IMPORTANT AND
impressive book that deserves our atten-
tion. Although it’s not a perfect book, its
author, a professor of philosophy at Gettys-
burg College in Pennsylvania, displays deep
thought and wide reading, and traverses a
broad canvas in understanding ignorance. On
the whole the writing is accessible to patient
general readers, and DeNicola carefully
introduces them to the technical language of
the theory of knowledge (or ‘epistemology’,
as it is known in the business).
He considers Ignorance under three cate-
gories:
(1) Known unknowns – what I know I don’t
know;
(2) Unknown unknowns – what I don’t know
I don’t know; and
(3) Unknown knowns – what I don’t know I
know; for example tacit knowledge, or what
I have forgotten before being reminded.
The many variations of these categories
are analysed in an accessible way. More diffi-
cult are the categories of understanding, since
the distinction between understanding and
knowledge is subtle. Knowledge can be
conceived as information, where I know the
description and specification of something;
while understanding is the integration of vari-
ous sets of information in ways that build up
systemic relationships between them in your
mind. In this state I know the description and
specification of something and can evaluate
and apply what I know, as well as be aware of
different understandings of that information.
DeNicola first examines the various
reasons and ways that people remain igno-
rant in a knowledge sense, that is, in terms of
sheer information. He leads us to recognise
that even the cleverest of us may fail to notice
particular pieces of subtle information
(perhaps of a personal kind), resulting in
specific forms of misunderstanding. From
here the author undertakes a more complex
examination of how such ignorance comes
about, as well as cases where ignorance may
be deliberately chosen.
Several times the author also raises the
question of ‘innocence’ as a form of ignorance.
He makes the following salient observation:
“[When] innocence is prolonged and
enforced, moral maturity is kept out of
reach. The restriction of experience, the
prohibitions and censorship of knowledge
that such sustained naiveté would likely
require, become a kind of imposed igno-
rance… [such innocence does] not cross the
threshold of moral maturity” (p.53).
I also found the following lines especially
important: “Only recognition of the possibil-
ity of our own ignorance opens a cognitive
space for unlearning false knowledge or for
genuine learning (or an improved igno-
rance)” (p.186); and “Within the horizon of
the unknown, we may come to seek a learned
ignorance, to understand our search for
knowledge not as a quest for certainty, but as
an attempt to refine, improve, and moralize
Book Reviews

our ignorance” (p.193). There are gems
throughout the book which guide the reader
to a deeper understanding, including this:
“Mapping one’s ignorance also has affective
benefits. Wherever mastery of knowledge
and skills creates professional status, espe-
cially in practices that give professional
power over clients, there arises a natural
pride that rests on what one knows, and a
regrettable tendency for authority to devel-
op arrogance. We know the effects: failure
to listen, premature dismissal of relevant
information, overreaching and overbearing
professional conduct, mistakes and the
denial of them, and so on. An explicit
acknowledgement of ignorance may gener-
ate a corrective humility, a desire to see
Book Reviews
rather than presume understanding, alert-
ness to unforeseen consequences, and open-
ness to alternative approaches” (p.69f).
Many passages like this reveal an author
whose thinking has passed from knowledge
to a wisdom that understands. Yet this very
quote points to an area with which I wrestled
in my reading. To me, DeNicola’s reference
to “overreaching and overbearing profes-
sional conduct, mistakes and the denial of
them” especially describes those who boast
professional knowledge yet who do not know
that they do not know. In their lack of under-
standing they may be unaware of their igno-
rance. The disposition of people who know
less than they think they do works against
learning (after all, they already ‘know’!) and
works against opening-up to different
perspectives – other ways of looking at what
they ‘know’. It also works against the humil-
ity that is an essential condition of wisdom.
Every year I used to say to my students
(referring to a mythical textbook), “No-
one’s going to give you a job for recounting
what’s on p.476. You have to show that you
understand it, and that you can integrate
across different understandings, and apply
that synthesis!” Similarly, DeNicola writes:
“accessing [information] is not learning…
which requires attention and interest, affects
the knower… creates within the mind of the
learner informational networks, conceptual
connections, cognitive frameworks, and
expanded moral, intellectual and artistic
imagination. These aspects of the life of the
mind alter our ways of speaking, acting, and
responding to the world – and influence
what other knowledge we might choose to
‘look up’.” (p.77).
August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 47
Books
This emphasises that both our knowing
and our understanding in large part depend
upon our psychological aptitudes and dispo-
sitions, which can be either learner oriented
or non-learner oriented. People and societies
that have non-learner dispositions tend to be
only dimly aware of what they do not know,
and generally inactive in rolling back the
boundaries of the unknown.
The author refers to several works by ‘virtue
epistemology’ scholars, and writes, “They
have produced intriguing analyses of such epis-
temic traits as curiosity, humility, open-mind-
edness, intellectual courage and caution,
persistence, and respect for evidence, and of
intellectual vices” (p.116f). I particularly
appreciated DeNicola’s discussion of ‘Igno-
rance and Epistemology’, and his analysis of
the social nature both of not-knowing/not-
understanding and of knowing/understand-
ing, which he frames in terms of ‘epistemic
communities’ (p.57). Philosophers tend to
want to avoid ambiguity, and it’s pleasing to
note the author’s appreciation of ambiguity in
knowing and not-knowing, which he calls a
“continuum or spectrum of epistemic states, as
matters of gradation” (p.73). The gradations
may be overlapping. The mystery of how
much we know or how much we understand
can in a sense take us out of a philosophic mind-
set; but then, the philosophic mind is not the
sum of the human mind, and recognizing that
fact tests the humility of philosophers and non-
philosophers alike.
Those who attentively read Understand-
ing Ignorance will find much that will help
cultivate virtues concerned with how we
know and what we know (this is virtue epis-
temology) which take us out of our cognitive
comfort zone. Readers specifically inter-
ested in virtuous knowing may care to flick
straight through to the Epilogue after read-
ing Chapter 1, especially the sections on
‘Epistemology: Context and Content’,
‘Beyond Propositional Knowledge’,
‘Discovery and Justification’, and ‘Individ-
ual Knowers and Epistemic Communities’.
It’s worth acquiring this book for these
sections alone, and reading the whole work
in light of these sections is likely to increase
the understanding the book imparts.
© REV DR P.A. MCGAVIN 2019
Paul McGavin is a priest, scholar, educator &
pastor of the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goul-
burn, Australia, living in retirement in Sydney.
His email address is: drpamcgavin@bigpond.com
• Understanding Ignorance: The Surprising Impact
Of What We Don’t Know, by Daniel DeNicola, MIT
Press 2017, 264 pages, $27.95, ISBN 9780262036443
 NI G H T C R AW L E R

N
Film ightcrawler (2014) belongs in the
Terri Murray watches the disappearance of reality
into images, in the name of news.

canon of classic films about the

power of representation and the
insidious effects of the media,
alongside such prescient movies as Network,
Medium Cool, They Shoot Horses Don’t They?,
Putney Swope, Ace in the Hole, Man Bites Dog,
Wag the Dog, Face in the Crowd and Death of a
President. The medium is the message in this
dark satire about how abysmally low the
media will stoop for a scoop. The viewer is
made to reflect upon the forces driving the
‘infotainment’ industry that has all but
replaced serious journalism. Let’s take a look.

The Presentation of Self & World

Director/writer Dan Gilroy’s screenplay is
genius, and Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo
are at their best as sleazy, compromised
anti-heroes.
If you emerge from the cinema wanting to
reflect further on Gyllenhaal’s character
Louis Bloom, may I recommend the work of
Canadian-American sociologist Erving
Goffman (1922–82)? I’m thinking particu-
larly of his account of people not as ‘inner
selves’, but as performers in social situations.
Goffman’s key concern was not ‘authentic-
ity’, but how our various performances
promote our social survival, or not. In his
1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday
Life, Goffman suggested that image manage-
ment forms the basis of our behaviour. He
divides life into ‘on stage’ and ‘back stage’
moments, and sees people as actors. The self
is dependent on its ‘dramaturgical’ relation-
ship to the social nexus of institutions,
through roles that will be credited or
discredited. As such, our self is a result of the
façades we erect for different audiences. It is
an effect, not a cause, arising from the scenes
of our lives. This way of thinking about the
self is reflected in Nightcrawler.
Lou Bloom is a hustler who makes his
living from deceptive self-promotion. His
primary skill, and the key to his success, is
persuading people that he already possesses
abilities which in reality he will gain only if
they believe him and invest in him. He sells
them an illusion; but in doing so the illusion
becomes real. And just as Lou constructs a
self from the fictional persona he pushes, he
also brings into being a set of real effects
from the media illusion he sells.
Transformation by means of self-fulfill-
ing prophecy is a leitmotif humming beneath
all the events depicted, including Lou selling
himself as a roaming reporter/cameraman (a
‘stringer’) to Nina (Russo), the News Editor
at KWLA, and his ‘I run a successful TV
news business’ spiel when hiring his assistant
Rick (Riz Ahmed). Lou needs the assistant to
make his business successful, and by convinc-
ing him that his business is already successful,
he gets the outcome he wants: the youngster
takes the job. Lou isn’t the only one at it; his
competitor offers to bring him in to a
company that doesn’t yet exist – but would if
he could get Lou on his team.
It’s all image. In each case the pretence of
some situation being better than it is in real-
ity is used to bring the better situation into
reality. If this works for aspirations and
ambitions, then it also works for fears and
nightmares. Goffman’s emphasis on the
‘façade self’ has its parallel in the view of
contemporary culture as a world full of
images and simulations. Lou needs sensa-
tional and gruesome footage to get the
ratings, so he invents it. At first he merely
uses clever editing to heighten the viewer’s
sense of personal tragedy and loss, giving
the content more emotive appeal. Later he
actually interferes with the world he’s
supposed to only be recording, by posing
and even moving corpses for better camera
angles and more dramatic effect.
What’s most disturbing about Lou’s
behaviour is that he chooses to exploit
victims of crime when he could put down his
camera and help them. Instead, he trans-
forms their suffering and misfortune into a
cash cow, thus feeding on other peoples’
misfortune, prolonging it, expanding it, and
intensifying it. This worsens the victim’s
situation, perverts and demeans Lou’s own
humanity, and creates an appetite for bad
news and schadenfreude in his viewers. The
sheer volume of human misery and violence
he serves up probably desensitises the public
to suffering as much as it has done to Lou
himself. Not only does the subject change
in front of the camera like a gory version of
quantum observation changing reality, the
cameraman is also transformed, into a blood
junkie hankering after an ever more potent
fix. In all these ways the production of
broadcast news by reporters obsessed with
violence and tragedy results in an altered
reality – a culture fashioned in the image of

48 Philosophy Now l August/September 2019

 the media content it consumes. In convinc-
ing others to believe in his illusions and false
‘realities’, the broadcaster nurtures their
wildest fantasies and nightmares. As Lou
says, “You know what FEAR stands for?...
False Evidence Appearing Real.”
Nightcrawler makes us question how far
today’s media are transforming the world as
opposed to merely reflecting or observing
it. The consensus among media scholars is
that a ‘hypodermic’ (or we might say ‘direct
injection’) model of media effects overesti-
mates the power of the media to shape
perceptions and behaviour. Nevertheless,
the weight of evidence from dozens of stud-
ies supports the view that exposure to media
violence does lead to aggression, desensiti-
zation toward violence, and lack of sympa-
thy for its victims, particularly in children.
The US Surgeon General’s Office, the US
National Institute of Mental Health, and
many professional organisations around the
world, consider exposure to media violence
a risk factor for actual violence.
The Unreality of the Presentation
All of this gives new relevance to the work
of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard
(1929-2007). Baudrillard, even before the
birth of the internet, used to emphasise that
we inhabit a world engulfed by constant and
pervasive images, or what he called ‘hyper-
reality’. He explored how the media trans-
form the reality that most of us take for
granted as being separate and distinct from
mere images or representations of it. For
example, in The Evil Demon of Images (1984)
Baudrillard explained how images have
‘imploded’ into the real world. Now images
NIGHTCRAWLER IMAGES © OPEN ROAD FILMS 2014
precede and shape reality. This reverses the
conventional causal relationship between
reality and the image. One of Baudrillard’s
core arguments was that our world is so
thoroughly saturated with mediated images
of it that there’s no longer any way to access
a real world untainted by this flux of appear-
ances. Our experience of the world is
filtered through preconceptions and expec-
tations that are products of media culture;
and in a world saturated with reproductions,
representations, and imitations, it becomes
very difficult to conceptualise a ‘pure reality’
to which we can contrast the myriad of
simulations. Simulations have imploded
into us, into our behaviour, our bodies, our
buildings, our procedures, and our environ-
ment, such that our real world is regulated
by simulation. The arrow between the real
and the representation seems to have been
reversed: now ‘reality’ is an effect of media
culture, rather than culture springing from
something prior to and deeper than it.
Instead of art imitating life, life imitates art.
In his 1923 book Crystallizing Public
Opinion, the Austrian-American public rela-
tions and propaganda pioneer Edward
Bernays (1891-1995) wrote that the PR
executive’s most valuable asset is a capacity
for crystallizing the obscure tendencies of
the public mind before they find expression.
The propagandist must tap into instincts
and emotions that already exist in order to
extract the desired responses and reactions;
he cannot create reactions out of thin air.
His job is more akin to directing the public
towards, or deflecting them from, certain
aims or goals. By framing the facts in partic-
ular ways, he is able to change their signifi-
Lou rearranges some
props for a shoot
August/September 2019 l Philosophy Now 49
Film
cance to his audience.
In explaining the method by which
propaganda works, Bernays said that news
receives attention in the competitive
marketplace by virtue of its ‘superior inher-
ent interest’. Therefore, the PR executive
must “lift startling facts from his whole
subject and present them as news. He must
isolate ideas and develop them into events so
that they can be more readily understood
and may claim attention as news” (p. 171).
In just this way, Nightcrawler’s Nina sees
how connections between separate events
can be woven into a tapestry that makes
them more ‘newsworthy’ (that is, more
sensational): “Tie it in with the carjacking
last month in Glendale and the other one,
the van in Palms, when was that? March. It’s
a carjacking crime wave. That’s the banner.
Call the victim’s family. Get a quote. Mike
it. You know what to do.” Meanwhile Lou
wants to move up the corporate ladder into
the editorial side of the business. He is
acutely aware that the most sensational and
graphic content will ‘cut through’ and boost
the network’s market share: “I don’t think
it’s any secret that I’ve single-handedly
raised the unit price of your ratings book,”
he tells Nina. In his 1928 book Propaganda,
Bernays explains how news is as much made
as it is captured:
“In the selection of news the editor is usually
entirely independent. In the New York Times
– to take an outstanding example – [the
editors] determine with complete indepen-
dence what is and what is not news… The fact
of its accomplishment makes it news. If the
public relations counsel can breathe the
breath of life into an idea and make it take its
place among other ideas and events, it will
receive the public attention it merits” (p.150).
We can glean parallels between what
Bernays says about the role of the newspaper
editor and Nina’s job as a television news
editor. Her constructing the news is given its
most literal exposition in the ‘horror house’
segment of the movie, in which Nina tells
her anchor literally to “build it!”
Nightcrawler persistently reminds us how
the propagandist fulfils his client’s aspira-
tions by turning fantasies into ‘reality’.
Looking at a fake backdrop of the Los Ange-
les skyline at the television station, Lou says
to Nina, “On TV it looks so real.” Gilroy’s
dialogue often cleverly insinuates this seep-
ing of fiction and fantasy into a world that
resembles them:
Lou: I’m focusing on framing. A proper frame
not only draws the eye into a picture but keeps
it there longer – dissolving the barrier between
the subject and the outside of the frame.
Nina: Is that blood on your shirt?
‘Framing’ is a central trope in Nightcrawler.
By invading the home of a family struck by
tragedy, and zooming in on a family photo
stuck to their fridge, Lou reframes the other-
wise common event into ‘good television’. He
quickly learns how the editors at the station
construct the story to maximum effect by
linking the intimate details he has recorded to
the loss they’ve suffered, thus turning anony-
mous victims into ‘relatable characters’.
Reporting Tragedy or Causing It?
But this is just a movie. How closely does this
fiction reflect the activities of real media
organisations? Dateline NBC’s To Catch a
Predator reality TV program provides a vivid
50 Philosophy Now l August/September 2019
example of how a network blurred the line
between journalism and entertainment, and
between reporting events and causing them.
The show sought out online predators such
as paedophiles and lured them to meetings
that would end with their arrest. Its sting
operations caught dozens of people. The
irony, said critics, was that the network acted
in a predatory way itself. Its set-ups seemed
likely to have made criminals out of at least
some people who had merely flirted around
the edges of illegal activity until being
coaxed into actually committing illegal acts
by the show’s actors. Crime makes good
television; potential crime doesn’t.
In the most notorious case, the network
used an underage-looking actor to entrap a
small-town Texas Assistant District Attor-
ney called Bill Conradt. The network
involved the otherwise bored local police
force – a role they were apparently only too
excited to assume, since it gave them
national attention. With the cops function-
ing as its de facto actors, the network then
decided to do something unprecedented.
Since Conradt was no longer responding to
their actor’s online solicitations, the TV
crew persuaded local law enforcement to call
in a SWAT team! With NBC’s camera
rolling, the police broke into Conradt’s
home. Facing public shame and under the
intense duress of the situation, Conradt put
a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
NBC, with all the sensitivity of a dentist’s
drill, broadcast the segment during prime
time. The presenter of To Catch a Predator
said Conradt’s suicide was something
“nobody can feel good about”, but expressed
no regrets about the overall handling of the
operation. Conradt’s family sued. Some of
the men caught in the show’s sting opera-
tions, however, admitted to previous crimi-
nal activity. In this way the show’s illusions
sometimes revealed realities. As in
Nightcrawler, illusion and reality alternated
in a fast, close dance.
Unlike the usual escapist offerings at the
cinema, Nightcrawler has an ‘alienating’ effect,
insofar as it forces us to think about the media
and the entire system within which it is made,
rather than just taking it for granted. In the
same sense that Bertolt Brecht’s epic plays are
revolutionary theatre, Nightcrawler is a truly
revolutionary film, for it provokes viewers to
question their social conditions and what it
means to consume media.
© TERRI MURRAY 2019
Terri Murray is the author of Feminist Film
Studies: A Teacher’s Guide. She earned her
BFA degree in Film & Television Studies from
NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and has taught
A-Level film studies for 15 years.
A cinematic vision of fake news,
including a mirror image of a fake city
IMAGE BY CAROL BELANGER GRAFTON
First Believe, Then Understand
Peter Adamson reviews the relation of reason & revelation.
S with that of Aquinas. Śaṅkara explicitly
ince the seventeenth century or so,
European thought has been
increasingly shaped by the idea that
science and religion are opposed.
Enlightenment philosophers and their
heirs have mostly striven to align their dis-
cipline with science and distance it from
religion. Once the handmaid of theology,
now philosophy is often the handmaid of
neuroscience or particle physics. So perva-
sive now is the notion that religious belief is
independent from, or even diametrically
opposed to, scientific inquiry, that it can be
hard for us to appreciate older ways of
seeing the relationship between reason and
revelation. But let’s try.
One major way of thinking about it was
laid down by St Augustine (354-430):
‘Believe in order to understand’ (crede ut
intelligas). We mere humans should
depend on revealed truths in our thinking
to ensure that we do not go astray in spiri-
tual matters; but that dependence certainly
did not rule out rational argumentation.
Indeed the Augustinian slogan was quoted
by Anselm just before he presented the
most famous rational demonstration in all
medieval philosophy, his ontological argu-
ment for the existence of God. As jarring as
this attitude might be to us given our post-
Enlightenment attitudes, it is not that hard
to understand. After all, it’s one thing to
believe that God exists or that Christ died
for our sins, another to understand exactly
what these doctrines mean, and yet some-
thing else to understand all they may
imply. Reason may still have much to con-
tribute, even once faith has had its say.
This point was made in more rigorous
terms by Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). He
would have been astonished by the modern
notion that religious belief is fundamentally
irrational. To the contrary: truth, including
religious truth, comes from God, and God
is perfectly rational. Exploiting what seems
to English speakers to be an ambiguity of
the Latin word scientia (knowledge), he said
that the theology of sacred science (scientia)
derives from the higher understanding (sci-
entia) of God. So for Aquinas no human sci-
ence is more ‘scientific’ than theology, even
Philosophy Then
though, or rather precisely because, it rests
upon divine revelation.
Actually, Aquinas thought that unaided
human reason can establish certain funda-
mental truths of Christianity, notably that
there does exist one perfectly good,
infinitely powerful God. But other doc-
trines of the faith cannot be proven with
merely human powers. Rational proof was
impossible in such cases as the incarnation,
transubstantiation and the Trinity. You
can’t prove that God became a man, that
bread becomes flesh, or that one God is
three Persons, the way you can prove a
theorem of mathematics or physics. Yet
reason has its part to play in understanding
these doctrines too. We can at least estab-
lish that they involve no impossibilities,
thus refuting some criticisms from mem-
bers of the other Abrahamic religions. And
we can come to a deeper understanding of
the doctrines, for instance by applying
Aristotle’s analysis of relational properties
to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. So on
Aquinas’s telling, far from being irrational
theology is the richest and most powerful
application of reason, just because it draws
on the additional resources of revelation.
Aquinas’s particular way of describing
the relationship between religion and
reason was culturally specific – a negoti-
ated settlement between Augustinian the-
ology and Aristotelian philosophy. But in
its broad outlines his solution can also be
example Śaṅkara, a leading exponent of
found in other times and places. Take for
the Indian school of Vedānta, who lived in
the eighth century AD. Śaṅkara likewise
represented a tradition of philosophical
engagement with scripture, in his case
with the ancient Vedas and the Hindu lit-
Upaniṣads but also such texts as the Bha-
erature they inspired, especially the
gavad Gītā. His distinctive contribution
was to put forward a ‘non-dual’ (advaita)
or monist theory, according to which
brahman, the divine origin of all things, is
in fact the only real thing. Brahman is also
My goal here is not to explain Śaṅkara’s
identical with the individual self.
teaching (thank goodness), but to point out
August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 51
that his method had something in common
denied that the single source of everything,
brahman, can be known directly through
human resources. Any knowledge we our-
selves derive depends on sense-perception
and other instruments of cognition, and
these can never grasp brahman, for brahman
is without any distinguishing characteris-
tics: it’s a kind of unchanging transcendent
consciousness without defined properties.
Therefore we know of brahman only
through the scriptures. But once we do
know it, we can use rational argumentation
to understand more fully how brahman
whose reality Śaṅkara puts in doubt.
relates to the world as it’s experienced –
Employing analogies from everyday life
Upaniṣads, Śaṅkara suggests that the reality
alongside constant citations from the
of any effect resides in the principle from
which it arose, like the pot that came from
and consists in nothing but clay. Just so, our
world of experience has its origin in brah-
origin. Śaṅkara also uses rational argument
man and has no reality distinct from that
to defeat rivals, both within the Vedic tradi-
tion and outside it. He appeals to other
Hindu readers with a combination of exe-
gesis and proof, defending his non-dual
theory as being plausible in both interpre-
tive and philosophical terms. And he offers
phy, which is opposed to Vedānta since the
a withering criticism of Buddhist philoso-
Buddhists reject the reality of the self.
Finally, he considers potential objections to
the non-dual theory, and meets them with
For Śaṅkara as for Anselm and Aquinas,
counter-refutation.
a proper understanding of things is
unattainable without the proper use of
reason. But a proper use of reason is
unattainable without religious commit-
ment. It is the Vedas, or the Bible, that give
us the truth, and the ‘scientist’s’ job is to
understand that truth.
© PROF. PETER ADAMSON 2019
Peter Adamson is the author of A History of
Philosophy Without Any Gaps, Vols 1, 2
& 3, available from OUP. They’re based on his
popular History of Philosophy podcast.
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August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 53


T allis Began Our Might
in
Wonderland
I
n his book The First Three Minutes
(1977), physicist Stephen Weinberg
famously proclaimed that “the more
the universe seems comprehensible,
the more it also seems pointless.” The
advance of science, it appears, results in what
the sociologist Max Weber, echoing
Friedrich Schiller, poignantly characterized
as ‘the disenchantment of the world’.
For Weinberg, it is worth noting, ‘the
universe’ is the physical world, and the phys-
ical world is the world of physics. Given that
physics advances by setting aside purpose,
meaning, value, not to speak of secondary
qualities such as colour or sound and the
viewpoints of subjects, his conclusion is
entirely unsurprising. But it does provide an
opportunity to remind ourselves of the
remarkable, and, I would submit, enchant-
ing path that has led to Weinberg’s terminal
disenchantment. The crucial step on that
path is the invention of measurement, some-
thing which we take too much for granted.
Stripping Away The Subject
The centrality of measurement to science
was proclaimed by the great nineteenth
century physicist Lord Kelvin:
“When you can measure what you are
speaking about, and express it in numbers,
you know something about it; when you
cannot express it in numbers, your knowl-
edge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind;
it may be the beginning of knowledge, but
you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced
to the stage of science.” (Lecture, 1883)
Measurement liberates us from our indi-
vidual, idiosyncratic judgements. In measur-
ing we endeavour to get ourselves out of the
way so that the world out there can speak for
itself. We may validly disagree whether a
vase is beautiful; but if you and I disagree as
to whether it is six or seven inches high, then
at least one of us is wrong.
Because measurement is ubiquitous in
science – and, in a world where science is the
dominant cultural fact, also in our everyday
54 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019
In Measure
Raymond Tallis takes the measure of measurement.
life – it’s hard to see just how strange it is
that we are able to dismount from the flow
of ordinary unsolicited experience to make
a space for disciplined, quality-controlled
active observations. What’s more, only a
small part of what is experienced during the
course of any measurement counts as the
measurement. My experiences of the labo-
ratory in which the measurement is made,
what I am feeling, my reasons for making
the measurement, and so on, are irrelevant.
Equally irrelevant are the exact appearance
of the measuring tool, and all but one
parameter of the object that is being
measured. The overwhelming majority of
the experienced properties of the ruler, for
example, and of the measured object are
incidental and excluded from the result. As
for the result, it doesn’t matter whether it’s
recorded in black or blue ink or pencil, or as
a number or dot on a screen. A measure-
ment, in short, extracts from a complex situ-
ation with at least three elements (person,
measuring tool, measured object) an item of
supreme simplicity: a number attached to a
unit. Everything else has been stripped off.
The idea of a data point, featureless and
vanishingly small, takes the stripped-down
nature of the measurement to a limit.
Consequently, neither the number nor the
unit tells us much about the object. If I say
of something that it is twenty-four inches,
you would not be able to attach any meaning
or significance to that statement, not even
whether it was long or short, unless you
already knew what the object was – a cater-
pillar or a tree.
The use of units to express results is the
most obvious marker of the special nature of
measurement and its distance from ordinary
experience. Inches and pounds do not exist
in nature: they are imported from the
further reaches of a form of discourse made
possible by the shared experiences of many
thousands of individuals, most of whom will
be unknown to those making the measure-
ment. This is a reminder of how far ‘results’
are from the unregulated flow of moment-
to-moment experience. When we cooper-
ate to measure something, it is not compa-
rable to looking at something together.
Indeed, each of us might have quite differ-
ent experiences of the act of measurement
and of what is measured, but those differ-
ences are not (or should not be) of any
importance. It will be evident that whether
it involves several thousands of people in the
hunt for the Higg’s Boson, or two people
holding a tape to measure the size of a room,
measurement requires shared conscious-
ness of a kind quite different from that seen
elsewhere in the animal kingdom.
The Transformation of Experience
To get a clearer idea of the extraordinary
nature of the journey from the pell-mell of
experience towards measurement and
thence to quantitative science, it helps to
think about the most primitive units. They
depend upon a curious transformation of
our relationship to our own bodies, in which
we see our bodies as a source of standardized
units, or at least of the idea of such units.
The use of forearms (for a cubit), hands (a
span), thumbs (an inch), and ‘feet’, as
measures of length, is an egregious instru-
mentalization of the flesh of which we are
made. When our ancestors deployed a
measure based on their forearms to quantify
the length of a building in cubits, bit of their
bodies were reduced to objects that were
further reduced to lengths. As ‘a cubit’, my
forearm loses the privileged standing it has
in my own life of being an intrinsic part of
me, and becomes any(one’s) forearm. And
this democratization is taken further. The
forearm is downgraded to an object onto-
logically on a par with the very objects
whose lengths it is used to measure: it is a
mere object among other objects. (The
compliment is returned much later when a
measuring tape, an item whose role is
simply to be its own length, is applied to the
forearm to determine its size.)
Measurement is a vital step in the process
of getting ourselves out of the way en route
to objective science. The result, the ‘read-
ing’, is stripped of the qualitative aspects of

sensation, and moreover, does not rely on
particular accidents of experience. For these
reasons it is particularly amenable to sharing
with, and corroboration by, others. You do
not have to have replicate my experiences in
order for both of us to arrive at the conclu-
sion that the object we have been measuring
is ten feet high.
This applies with even more force when
what is in question is not a single time-depen-
dent data point but a timeless impersonal
fact, such as that Manchester is 200 miles
from London, the Moon is 250,000 miles
from Earth, or the Sun is 4,000,000,000 years
old. The data which form the staple of
science and underpin its laws and principles,
not to speak of the wall-to-wall technology
that is based on them, are even more obvi-
ously independent of individuals and their
personal history. They belong to no-one, and
float freely of all bodies.
Nothing could more clearly demonstrate
the falsity of the claim by the otherwise bril-
liant nineteenth century physicist and
philosopher Ernst Mach that “there is no
break in continuity between science… and
modes of behaviour characteristic of the
entire animal world.” On the contrary,
dismounting from the flow of experience to
seek out a particular experience remote
from appetites is hardly the way of the beast.
Measurement, a voluntary interruption in
the spontaneous flow of experience that has
vastly extended our power to predict and
control the material world, is a manifestation
of our individual and collective unwiring
from nature and a driver to further unwiring.
This unwiring is the reward for the increas-
ingly active nature of our perceptual engage-
ment with the world, as we move from
gawping to scrutinizing and thence to
making quantitative observations. Measure-
ments which do not merely happen but are
made, often building on the efforts of others,
are a long way from passive bedazzlement by
sensory experiences.
Beyond the Rule of the Physical
The claim by W.B. Yeats in his poem ‘Under
Ben Bulben’ (1933) that ‘measurement began
our might’ is not entirely true. Our might has
deeper roots than measurement. Yeats does,
however, capture an important truth.
Through measurement, our capacity to
confront and act upon the natural world
from a distance is vastly enhanced. Our
collective facing of the world is supported by
a gaze not localized in an individual body –
and hence not vulnerable to its vicissitudes.
This gaze looks at a world beyond the hori-
zon that encircles biological vision, at a
realm of knowledge, of facts, of possibilities,
and ultimately of quantitative laws and equa-
tions. The out-of-body experiences of Man
the Measuring Animal place him beyond the
limits imposed by the biology of the human
organism, and even outside of nature.
With this we come to the most astonish-
ing truth about measurement. Although it is
the lifeblood of physics, measurement does not
fit into the world seen through the eyes of physics.
Don’t take my word for it. It was Albert
Einstein no less who in his Autobiographical
Notes reported that he was
“struck by the fact that the theory [relativi-
ty]… introduces two kinds of physical
things, i.e. (1) measuring rods and clocks,
and (2) all other things, e.g., the electromag-
netic field, the material point, etc. This, in a
certain sense, is inconsistent… strictly
speaking, measuring rods and clocks would
have to be represented as solutions of the
basic equations (objects consisting of mov-
August/September 2019
T allis
in
Wonderland
ing atomic configurations) not, as it were,
theoretically self-sufficient entities.”
But they are, irreducibly, theoretically self-
sufficient entities, because they are insepara-
ble from human beings with their points of
view, who provide those frames of reference
that are necessary for measurements.
Quantitative measurements cannot be
accommodated in the world-picture of natu-
ral science which rests on them. If, as physi-
cists would have it, the most faithful portrait
of the universe really were that it was a
‘system of magnitudes’, there would be no
place for the elucidation of those magni-
tudes. The expectation of Mach, whose
philosophy inspired the young Einstein,
“That the foundations of science as a whole,
and of physics in particular, await their next
greatest elucidations from the side of biol-
ogy, and especially from the analysis of
sensations” seems a forlorn hope.
So there we have it: measurement under-
pins a world picture that seems to support
naturalism; naturalism, however, cannot
support measurement. This takes us back to
the fundamental fact that natural science
cannot make sense of the human conscious-
ness upon which it depends. It cannot, there-
fore, explain how it is possible that, while all
entities are in time and have length, there
have emerged creatures who tell the time and
measure their length. In doing so, they express
a unique human capacity to get themselves
out of the way by privileging shared, quality-
controlled observations over immediate
experience. Most striking among the many
things science cannot accommodate, is the
existence of a scientific world picture.
Some of the meaning that’s lost as science
progresses is recovered when we reflect on
the capacity of science to further one version
of the comprehensibility of the universe.
Reminding ourselves of the scientific path to
disenchantment may re-enchant the world.
© PROF. RAYMOND TALLIS 2019
Raymond Tallis’s latest book, Logos: The
Mystery of How We Make Sense of the
World has recently been published by Agenda.
● Philosophy Now 55
Fiction
Mill Meets Gandhi
Utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill worked for the British East India Company
for 35 years. Long after Mill’s death, Gandhi led India to independence.
Eugene Alper imagines a meeting of these two great political thinkers.
Mill Gandhi
What appears to be a park somewhere. It’s sunny, with a light breeze.
John Stuart Mill is sitting on a bench dressed in his Victorian attire as
Mohandas Gandhi walks in, leaning on a cane. It’s January 31, 1948
– the day after Gandhi’s assassination – and Gandhi’s white shawl still
shows splashes of red.
Mill: I am sorry about what happened to you, sir.
Gandhi: Ah, it doesn’t hurt anymore. The good thing, I sup-
pose, is that pain is no more, ever. What hurts, though, is that
just when you think the British are your enemies, or the Mus-
lims are your enemies, or Western civilization is your enemy,
just then a fellow Hindu shoots you! Learn until you die – and
then learn some more. May I?
Mill: Of course. [Gandhi sits.] Truth be told, Western civilization
was never your enemy. A Western doctor might even have saved
you yesterday.
Gandhi: I would have sent him away. Didn’t Socrates send
Crito away?
Mill: Indeed.
Gandhi: So would I. When it’s time to go, go without an
English lancet sticking out of your chest. Besides, for a spiritual
leader it’s not bad to be martyred. It improves the resumé.
Mill: Right you are, sir, and good-natured as always. Socrates,
lancets, resumés – why would you dislike a civilization that’s so
much a part of you?
Gandhi: A cancer can be part of you too. Mohandas K. Gandhi
at your service. And to whom do I have the pleasure…?
Mill: John Stuart Mill. The pleasure is mine.
Gandhi: Ah. You are one of those Victorians who had an
unshakeable belief in progress, in Western civilization, in solving
all human problems through technology.
Mill: I suppose so. [An awkward silence follows]. The weather’s nice.
Gandhi: Indeed. I heard that here it always is.
Mill: Oh, no – then it would be as humdrum as, I don’t know…
Los Angeles. Here you have choices – you can choose desert,
forest, mountains, tropical beach, frozen tundra, whatever you
like. I prefer drizzle. It reminds me of my childhood.
56 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019
Gandhi: Ha! Maybe there is a monsoon section?
Mill: Haven’t seen it, but wouldn’t be surprised. They’d know in
the office.
Gandhi: To each his own climate. That’s what I call progress.
Mill: So you think progress possible, after all?
Gandhi: Only after all.
Mill: I always wondered about those bright young men who
come from the colonies in Africa or Asia to study in Europe.
They learn her values, they enjoy her freedom, they get her edu-
cation, and then they go back, don native garb, denounce what
they so voraciously imbibed, and declare war on her. Blaming
their own corruption and lack of progress on Europe, as if she
were somehow holding them back. Whence comes all this, I
wonder? But then again, who else can they blame? Who else can
a teenager blame for his immaturity and illiteracy, if not his
mother? She’s the only one available.
Gandhi: A mother who is less mature than her children. I’ve
always wondered whence comes Europe’s domineering patroniz-
ing – or should I say matronizing? – of other peoples. Whence
her gung-ho optimism about a bright future, about history
unfolding towards some shining goal, with her sons somehow
always at the forefront, leading others? Why is she so self-assured?
Mill: But she is not. I agree, Europe may at times be too opti-
mistic about human progress. I have my doubts about it, too. Yet
it would be a caricature to paint Western culture as being uncrit-
ically proud of what it grew to be, or somehow methodically ful-
filling some grand plan for progress, or technological achieve-
ment, or conquest. Until recently we did not know all this was
possible either. We did not plan to create a strong civilization: it
just happened to us. All we wanted was survival, security, maybe
some prosperity… Is that so different from others? All we did
was face our challenges the best we could. True, at the end we
found ourselves with better tools, stronger weapons, taller build-
ings, and faster ships. But we did not plan it so. It was as surpris-
ing to us as it was to you.
Gandhi: Did it just happen to you that your government ruled
India for ninety years?
Mill: It’s easy for you to see everything we symbolize as evil:
“They’re to blame for our misery!” But that’s an easy way out.
You should thank us, the strangers in your midst, for giving you a
convenient target. But everyone is miserable, and so were we,
except we had no one to blame for it. It is our empire where the
sun never sets.
Gandhi: Accept my deepest sympathies.
Mill: I do – because we were in a worse position. You have the
hope that now we’ve left, you’ll be happier. It’s an illusion, so
enjoy it while you can. But no one rules us, so we have no illu-
sions, and no hope. Who is better off?
Gandhi: Poor souls.

Mill: And what about responsibility? When a man suddenly finds
himself ruling others, does he not ask himself what his responsi-
bility is towards them? Does he not have to wonder what the
right thing is for him to do? If he knows more than they, should
he leave these people to their old and obsolete ways, or should
he teach them what he knows?
Gandhi: Such hard choices. I say: Leave us alone!
Mill: But if we believe that improvements in human affairs are
possible, and that through no special virtue of ours, but through a
series of historical accidents, we have found ways to do some
things better, isn’t it our moral duty to share them with others?
Did you not teach your children so they would not repeat your
mistakes? Did you not pass onto them your knowledge?
Gandhi: Keep your white man’s burden to yourself. We are not
your children. India’s civilization is older than yours and has
nothing to learn from yours. Your faith in progress, sir – in some
continuous improvement of human affairs, in some evolutionary
BACKGROUND PHOTO © DIETMAR RABICH 2018
development – is nothing but that old Judeo-Christian idea of
history having a direction. It’s your expectation of a Messiah and
his return, only wrapped in modern, non-religious language.
Darwin! Continuous improvement of the species, of technology,
of human nature, of society! Eugenics, social engineering! Your
faith in progress is just another faith in a better future. In India
we do not have those illusions. We do not believe in mankind
improving itself generation after generation. We think of history
as cyclical. If anything, we look to our past for guidance.
Mill: So our faith is naïve because it’s about a Golden Age that
will never be, but yours is wise because it’s about a Golden Age
that has never been? At least we have something tangible to
show for it. For can you deny, sir, that Western technology has
made gigantic steps towards curbing human disease, reducing
human poverty? –
Gandhi: Towards obliterating the planet with the atomic bomb?
Your idea of progress is superficial. You see one man riding a
horse and another a train, and you say the latter is more
advanced. But what difference does it make if the most funda-
mental things about human affairs remain unchanged? The real
evils of the world cannot be removed unless man changes some-
thing within himself. And this is what we are aiming at – not at
hopping on a bicycle to move through the world a little faster
than before. We see man as being at one with the world around
him, and only when he changes within himself will he change the
world around him, because he is inseparable from the rest of the
world. But you in the West do not understand this. You think
man is separate. You pride yourself in your individualism – this is
me, and this is the rest of the world – as if a glance into your
microscopes did not prove the exact opposite. Take a look: where
is the border between man and his world? Where is that hard line
which the flying particles of your skin dare not cross? Where is
that line where man ends and the rest of the world begins? It’s a
myth that man is separate from the world – a naïve Western fairy
tale! Except in this one nobody lives happily ever after.
Mill: What makes man special is not the particles of which he
consists, but his awareness of being somehow separate from the
rest of reality.
Gandhi: But this awareness is mistaken. We come from the
dust, and to the dust we return! What gives you reason to believe
you are separate?
Fiction
Mill: I don’t know. Maybe because no one outside me can know
my thoughts? Or maybe because I can command my feet, arms,
hands, face – my own body – but not anything outside of me. But
it’s this awareness that makes a human different from other col-
lections of atoms. Maybe he does want to control more than his
own body, to control what’s outside of him, to bend it a bit to his
needs, to make it more useful for himself. I would not deny it.
But this is only because he is so vulnerable in his sensitive skin,
so afraid –
Gandhi: Yes he is afraid! Oh yes, he wants control! Yes, he wants
to dominate nature because he is fearful of her! He wants to bend
her to his will, to put her on the rack and get answers out of her.
Thank you Mr Bacon, merci Monsieur Descartes, for the exciting
but false inspiration you gave humanity! How naïve it is for a
mortal creature to want to do something like this. What a useless
task it is to try to control nature without knowing how to control
yourself, your own fear. For if you knew how to control you, you
would no longer need to bend nature to your needs – you would
blend with her. You would remain part of her, as you have always
been meant to be, as on the day you were born, so on the day you
died. Do you think Indians could not control nature if we wanted
to? Do you think we could not have made engines or microscopes?
We made a decision not to. Our ancestors knew that human happi-
ness is a mental state, so they set limits to what we should do with
our bodies. They discouraged us from luxuries, and we have man-
aged with the same kind of plow that existed thousands of years
ago. We live in the same shacks we lived in before; and our educa-
tion remains the same as in former times –
Mill: But what if you saw someone tinkering with his plow and
he told you he had an idea how to improve it? What would you
say to him?
Gandhi: I’d tell him there was no need for improvement. Our
ancestors managed quite well, and a new plow will not make
anyone happy. It will make him happier for a short while. And
then he will get used to it and be miserable again.
Mill: But that’s not the point. He had a spark of creativity in
him, perhaps the most human of all things, and you’ve just killed
it. You blew out the most precious and vulnerable light flickering
in his soul – insight.
Gandhi: Your civilization has had many insights. So what? It has
created great technological wonders. Yet the more impressive
they are, the more arrogant you become, the more sure of your-
self. But are you any happier? Does your machine gun make you
happier?
Mill: No one is happier because of the machine gun; but no one
is surprised by it either. To invent better weapons is business as
usual for humanity; but to invent penicillin is not. Would you
not recognize penicillin as progress in human affairs?
Gandhi: But this ‘progress’ of yours, indeed your whole so-
called civilization, are by-products of war, of fear. All your
improvements come from it. Your innovation is driven by fear of
being hurt or enslaved by an enemy, or a presumed enemy, or an
enemy you create in your own mind. A man wants to protect
himself, and out of fear he builds a fence. If he did not fear,
would he build the fence?
Mill: Perhaps not.
Gandhi: But once he knows how to build a fence, he uses this
knowledge for other purposes, doesn’t he? Now he builds a
August/September 2019 ● Philosophy Now 57
Fiction
fence to cull wild horses; now he builds a fence to keep cattle and
pigs and sheep from running away; now he builds a fence to
enclose his land from his neighbour’s. But it started as a measure
of personal protection, did it not? It started from fear. And when
he makes a stick to protect himself, he then uses this for other
purposes, does he not? He now digs soil or knocks fruit off a
branch with the stick, doesn’t he? Your tools – your civilization
itself – is an extension of your war effort, and none of the
improvements would exist if it hadn’t been for war. But in India
we do not wish our civilization to be driven by war. In India, we
must learn not to fear. And we do not need sticks.
Mill: But how can you avoid them? Englishmen and Indians
have the same bodies, so we must have the same fears too. Was
your skin not as sensitive as mine? How can an Indian not build
fences and make sticks?
Gandhi: The way we fought the British: by passive resistance.
Mill: You, sir, may be strong enough to passively resist a force
applied to you. But will you passively resist a murderer coming
after your child or a rapist coming after your wife? You may
want to be pure; but can you be pure when others suffer from
your purity? How pure are you if evil is committed in front of
you and you do nothing?
Gandhi: But by reacting the way you do, the murderer and the
rapist have acquired power over you, sir. You wish to live the good
life; but the worst of the Earth make you play by their rules. The
bad have taken the good hostage! They bring you down, sir – you
who fancy yourself to be good. By simply being in the world, they
make you build a fence and pick up a stick. But what is the differ-
ence between the good and the bad if both are wielding sticks?
Mill: Maybe the difference is that the good think harder? Maybe
they use reason more? Maybe while holding the stick they hesi-
tate and doubt? Maybe they ponder how not to become bad,
how not to overstep, how not to lose their humanity, how to use
the stick only against the bad, and only when necessary?
Gandhi: But violence must be stopped by someone. Someone
must drop the stick first. And who should do this, if not the
good? Those who have learned to control their own fear. The
good! Or do you find the conflict good?
Mill: I do not. But I did not make it so, I found it so. What can
one do but face all this with courage, with maturity, with hope?
Not to remain indifferent in the presence of evil – but not to
stoop to its level either. Is there a recipe for how to do this well?
I don’t have it. Do you?
Gandhi: I thought there would be some answers here –
Mill: I did too.
Gandhi: Did you ask at the office?
Mill: They say they don’t know. But you can always file a complaint.
Gandhi: Where did you say the monsoon section was?
Mill: Not sure. Again, I would ask at the office. [Stands.] Harriet
must be wondering where I am.
Gandhi: And I must look for Kasturba. [Stands.] You know how
they say: happy wife, happy afterlife. Good afternoon, sir.
Mill: Good afternoon, sir.
[Exeunt in different directions.]
© EUGENE ALPER 2019
Eugene Alper studies political philosophy at Claremont Graduate
University and thanks Dr Sharon Snowiss, Dr Maria Gracia
Inglessis, and Patrick Burge.
58 Philosophy Now ● August/September 2019
Philosophical Haiku
OCKHAM © STEPHEN LAHEY
William of Ockham
(1285–1347/8 CE)
A pauper’s philosophy –
Only things exist.
Excise the excess.
W
illiam from Ockham (or Occam), an otherwise obscure vil-
lage in Surrey, England, was the greatest philosopher of
the fourteenth century. Known as the Doctor Invincibilis,
he didn’t care whom he offended, and with his rough and
ready style of argument, he offended plenty of people – which eventu-
ally got him into big trouble.
He became a Franciscan monk, an order famous for its commitment
to poverty. But this meant he was at risk of having idle hands (one of
poverty’s unacknowledged benefits), and so doing the Devil’s work. To
avoid this calamity, he wrote widely on logic, physics, and theology.
Today he is most often associated with ‘Ockham’s Razor’, his idea
that explanations should be as simple as possible (alternative formula-
tions of this principle include ‘Entities should not be multiplied beyond
necessity’ and ‘It is futile to do with more things that which can be done
with fewer’). Frankly, this is a good rule of thumb whatever you’re think-
ing about. As an application of this principle, he also taught that the only
things that exist are individual entities such as this chair, that table, the
tree over there, and so on: there is no universal Chair or Table or Tree
from which the physical entities draw their essence (pace Plato).
Having already been condemned as a heretic in 1326 for having
unorthodox views, since he argued against Aquinas’s philosophy, he
didn’t help himself when in 1328 he sided with those who argued against
the Pope that Jesus and his disciples didn’t own any property. This was
obviously a matter of considerable importance to the Pope, who owned
a lot of property. Seeing what was coming (imprisonment and execu-
tion), William took refuge with the Holy Roman Emperor in Bavaria.
Excommunicated, but feeling a bit safer, he wrote polemics against the
Pope’s claim to temporal power, thus emulating Dante.
The invincible teacher was finally beaten around 1347/48, probably
by the Black Death. The Pope had died earlier, in 1334, still owning lots
of property, just like Jesus.
© TERENCE GREEN 2019
Terence is a writer, historian, and lecturer, and lives with his wife
and their dog in Paekakariki, NZ.

For 2000 years, philosophers
have described human
nature as a conflict between
passion and reason. Dual
morality shows why both
passion and reason are
merely aspects of the
intensity of our two-sided
moral nature.
Democracy doesn't create equality,
equality creates democracy. The trifecta
of morality has always been the control
of sex, restrictions on violence, and the
proper distribution of wealth.
/52
#/-
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